need info on Petzl Aceto lamp
Rick Mace
wondering if anyone out there has one and how they like it. Any pros and
cons on this carbide setup? I have several Autolight and Justrite carbide
lamps and I find them to work great as caving lamps. I thought that this
Aceto setup might be good for longer trips without changing carbide as
often. I'm sure this has all been talked about before but I don't recall
seeing anything about this lamp. Anyone have any input on this? Thanks,
Rick
DONALD G. DAVIS
I'm not acquainted with that specific model, but I assume that,
like all Petzl carbides I know of, it must be a "ceiling burner," using a
belt-mounted generator and a hose that runs to a headpiece with a fan-
flame burner and small flat reflector. A case can be made for using such
lamps on multi-day expeditions in cold, wet caves, where the heat
generation can be useful, but I've never understood why anyone doing
routine day caving trips such as are usual in the United States would want
to use one. The fan-flame burner is very inefficient, which is made worse
by the ineffective reflector, so these lamps use carbide at several times
the consumption of a cap having a better-focusing reflector. The flame is
often put out when the generator is bumped or the hose gets pinched.
Furthermore, the flame puts out much more soot than a cap lamp (the
"ceiling burner" tag is only too accurate). Finally, the generator is
heavy and cumbersome.
If you are going to carry a waist-mounted fuel source anyway, why
not go electric, a Wheat lamp or one like the Easter Seal with a belt-
mounted D-cell case, and have a clean light free from the fiddling
involved in keeping the ceiling burner running? If you still prefer
carbide, you should be able to get up to 6 hours per charge with your
Justrite or Auto-Lite cap lamp with an optimal carbide charge and
parabolic reflector, and changing carbide is easy if you carry a
pre-filled spare bottom or two.
--Donald Davis
Alex Sproul
The Donald is a knowledgeable carbide caver, but having not, by his
own admission, used the Petzl Aceto (the only ceiling burner currently
available), some of his statements concerning it are, well, a little
off the mark.
>A case can be made for using such lamps on multi-day expeditions in
>cold, wet caves, where the heat generation can be useful, but I've never
>understood why anyone doing routine day caving trips such as are
>usual in the United States would want to use one.
The case to be made is the same: The heat generation is useful, and it
give a helluva lot of light. If you want a lot of light, you can
carry a big battery on your hip, or a (less heavy) carbide generator.
>The fan-flame burner is very inefficient, which is made worse
>by the ineffective reflector, so these lamps use carbide at several times
>the consumption of a cap having a better-focusing reflector.
No less efficient than a caplamp, Donald, it just has a larger orifice
(14 or 21L, as opposed to 7L in a caplamp); it therefore consumes
carbide and water 2-3 times as fast,...and produces 2-3 times the
light. The Aceto does not have a reflector. That concave metal thing
on the top (which immediately becomes soot-covered) is not a
reflector, it's a shield, to prevent blinding the cavers behind. With
the amount of light it produces, who needs a reflector?
>Furthermore, the flame puts out much more soot than a cap lamp (the
>"ceiling burner" tag is only too accurate).
No, it puts out more gas, more flame, more light, and therefore
correspondingly more soot. A caplamp can and will 'burn the ceiling'
just as well.
>The flame is often put out when the generator is bumped or the hose
>gets pinched.
There are occasional 'flameouts' due to jostling or inverting the
generator (I don't want to get into that technical debate again!), and
though it is more prevalent with generators, which are larger,
caplamps do it, too. This is because they're gravity fed units.
There is a new model on the market now that is sealed; the water is
'fuel-injected' onto the carbide by means of a plunger pump. This
totally eliminates flameouts, in addition to providing better flame
management..
>Finally, the generator is heavy and cumbersome.
No more so than the equivalent number of caplamps producing the same
amount of light.... And it requires no more 'fiddling' (probably a
lot less) than a caplamp.
>...you should be able to get up to 6 hours per charge with your
>Justrite or Auto-Lite cap lamp with an optimal carbide charge and
>parabolic reflector, and changing carbide is easy if you carry a
>pre-filled spare bottom or two.
I'm sure The Donald can manage to squeeze 6 hours out of his Autolite,
but the typical user, who wants a 2" flame, gets more like 2-3 hours.
And I doubt that a parabolic reflector adds significantly to the
length of his burn. :^> Let's face it, people use ceiling burners
because they want MORE LIGHT, even on "routine day caving trips such
as are usual in the United States." Is that so wrong? In a world
with no light, more is always better. Carbide's still cheap, and --
in a ceiling burner -- gives a robust light that puts any electric to
shame. Can't really say that for a caplamp.
And changing carbide is easy with a generator, too. I carry
premeasured loads bound up in a pouch made from nylon hose and
protected in a ziploc freezer bag. Pluck out the old, drop in the
new, and you're on your way.
Having made my defense, I will also say that, as with any other piece
of caving gear, equipment should be selected based on the trip. I
love a caplamp in a small, sinewy passage, but in borehole an Aceto is
the cat's meow. If I'm pit bopping, a Zoom or Duo is fine; if I'm
doing initial vertical exploration, I want the far-reaching beam of a
Wheat or Night Rider. A ceiling burner is probably not the best
choice for vertical work.
So let's not run down one piece gear just because you're fond of
another. To each his own, as the occasion warrants.
Alex
Vaughan Thomas
"Rick Mace" <ric...@apk.net> wrote:
> I am thinking about buying a Petzl Explorer helmet/light setup and I
am
> wondering if anyone out there has one and how they like it. Any pros
and
> cons on this carbide setup? I have several Autolight and Justrite
carbide
> lamps and I find them to work great as caving lamps. I thought that
this
> Aceto setup might be good for longer trips without changing carbide
as
> often. I'm sure this has all been talked about before but I don't
recall
> seeing anything about this lamp. Anyone have any input on this?
Thanks,
> Rick
>
>
Getting back to your actual question, the new Petzl Aceto/Duo unit is
not really as robust as the old Laser-type IMHO - but it is probably
ok. It is certainly more robust than a lot of electric lamps.
Problems are it melting(!) due to too many plastic components, and
being unable to get the bezel off the Duo sometimes. These problems are
infrequent and probably due to lack of maintainance or sufficient care
in use.
Expedition carbides often set off a rant in certain quarters (see other
messages). I use one a great deal; mainly because it was the only lamp
I had for most of my caving career. On reflection, they are best for:
1. Remote expeditions
2. Big passages
3. Deep/wet/cold caves. I would not use electric-only in an alpine cave
- I don't think they a sufficiently dependable/repairable, and I
decline to carry multiple lamps.
If you do most of your caving in drier, warmer, less deep caves - then
it is overkill really. They can be unpleasant in warmer caves due to
heat output, and really unpleasant in dry, warm crawls (sweat city!).
Further, after a long trip, you can spend several hours trying to pick
the soot out of your nose.
However, regardless of their quirks, defects and frustrations - they
are (by miles) the best type of lamp for serious caving. I recently
bought some quite powerful electrics (16 hours @ 4W). It was like using
damp matches in comparison. I don't like the cold blue light, and the
"spot-on-the-wall" syndrome. I spent half the time thinking it must
have gone out! I miss the friendly all-round glow of a big burner.
regards
Vaughan
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
DONALD G. DAVIS
>I feel obliged to balance the scales concerning 'ceiling burners'.
>The Donald is a knowledgeable carbide caver, but having not, by his
>own admission, used the Petzl Aceto (the only ceiling burner currently
>available), some of his statements concerning it are, well, a little
>off the mark.
My comments, of course, were intended to apply to belt-generator
carbide lamps generally; most share the design features I criticized.
With all due respect, I can't agree with some of Alex's responses.
>it give a helluva lot of light. If you want a lot of light, you can
>carry a big battery on your hip, or a (less heavy) carbide generator.
Let's get some actual data here. My Easter-seal case with 4 D
cells weighs two pounds. This will light about 3 days of Lechuguilla
camp-based caving (including the sleep time, etc.) Does a full Aceto
generator, plus the spare carbide for the same time, really weigh less?
>>The fan-flame burner is very inefficient, which is made worse
>>by the ineffective reflector, so these lamps use carbide at several times
>>the consumption of a cap having a better-focusing reflector.
>No less efficient than a caplamp, Donald, it just has a larger orifice
>(14 or 21L, as opposed to 7L in a caplamp); it therefore consumes
>carbide and water 2-3 times as fast,...and produces 2-3 times the
>light. The Aceto does not have a reflector. That concave metal thing
>on the top (which immediately becomes soot-covered) is not a
>reflector, it's a shield, to prevent blinding the cavers behind. With
>the amount of light it produces, who needs a reflector?
*No* reflector? That's even worse than I thought. What a
perfectly ridiculous design! It *needs* to put out more total light,
since most of it is being wasted, going everywhere without sending light
very far in the direction in which the caver is looking. Of course, the
irregular-shaped fan flame, oriented vertically, is inherently less
focusable than the symmetrical, horizontal cap-lamp flame.
>>Furthermore, the flame puts out much more soot than a cap lamp (the
>>"ceiling burner" tag is only too accurate).
>No, it puts out more gas, more flame, more light, and therefore
>correspondingly more soot. A caplamp can and will 'burn the ceiling'
>just as well.
A cap lamp won't, unless its orifice is too large. It's my
experience that acetylene flames do not behave according to a simple
multiple of burner orifice size. The optimal ratio of light to soot is
produced with a small orifice, optimizing the mixture with oxygen and
giving a narrow, bright, clean flame which burns more of the carbon
without making a visible soot plume. With the 14- and 21-liter fan-flame
burners (as with a worn, too-large 7-liter orifice), the flame is
noticeably more yellow, and very often soot can easily be seen rising from
it. These burners are clearly less efficient at producing light from
acetylene, and dirtier to the cave.
>There are occasional 'flameouts' due to jostling or inverting the
>generator (I don't want to get into that technical debate again!), and
>though it is more prevalent with generators, which are larger,
>caplamps do it, too.
Cap lamps do it less because, with no hose in the system, there
are fewer opportunities for it.
>I'm sure The Donald can manage to squeeze 6 hours out of his Autolite,
>but the typical user, who wants a 2" flame, gets more like 2-3 hours.
>And I doubt that a parabolic reflector adds significantly to the
>length of his burn. :^>
The parabolic reflector is the central key to that, because it
produces ideal focus that lets me get as much light *where I'm looking*
with a 3/4" to 1" flame as the person using a flatter reflector does with
a 2" flame. With a parabolic reflector, no one *needs* a 2" flame.
>Let's face it, people use ceiling burners
>because they want MORE LIGHT, even on "routine day caving trips such
>as are usual in the United States." Is that so wrong? In a world
>with no light, more is always better. Carbide's still cheap, and --
>in a ceiling burner -- gives a robust light that puts any electric to
>shame. Can't really say that for a caplamp.
This does seem to represent the typical attitude of ceiling-burner
users, which puzzles me. There may be psychological satisfaction in
bathing one's surroundings in light radiating in all directions (would
psychoanalysis postulate a sun-god complex? ;->. But there are clear
objective disadvantages. The best way to get more *effective* light is
not brute force overkill, but to focus a smaller source efficiently toward
the center of your visual field. By doing so, you use significantly less
fuel and reduce your both your weight load and the impact of combustion
products on the caves. And carbide, at least in the United States, is
much more expensive and harder to find than it was a few years ago.
--Donald Davis
Nigel Robertson
DONALD G. DAVIS <dgd...@nyx10.nyx.net> wrote in message
news:94242982...@iris.nyx.net...
> i...@caves.org (Alex Sproul) writes:
>
> This does seem to represent the typical attitude of ceiling-burner
> users, which puzzles me. There may be psychological satisfaction in
> bathing one's surroundings in light radiating in all directions (would
> psychoanalysis postulate a sun-god complex? ;->. But there are clear
> objective disadvantages. The best way to get more *effective* light is
> not brute force overkill, but to focus a smaller source efficiently toward
> the center of your visual field.
I'd disagree with this last point Donald. Reducing the periphery vision by
using a highly focussed light not only reduces the amount of cave that
you'll see, but it also makes it harder to move about. Travelling over
uneven and awkward ground (e.g. a boulder slope) you are forced to stare at
your feet to see where to take the next step. A wider spread of light means
that your eyes are more fully utilised. The difference is much more marked
when comparing focussed electrics against fan tailed carbides.
For my tuppence worth, I really like big carbides but for the last few years
I've been using my electric just for ease of use and maintenance. I started
caving with a small stinky and can't remember having any difficulty seeing
the cave ... but things change... As Alex said, it depends on where you are
going, what mood you're in and whether the electric's charged or the
carbides been cleaned out from the last time ;)
Nigel
Nigel
DONALD G. DAVIS
>DONALD G. DAVIS <dgd...@nyx10.nyx.net> wrote in message
>news:94242982...@iris.nyx.net...
>> i...@caves.org (Alex Sproul) writes:
>> This does seem to represent the typical attitude of ceiling-burner
>> users, which puzzles me. There may be psychological satisfaction in
>> bathing one's surroundings in light radiating in all directions (would
>> psychoanalysis postulate a sun-god complex? ;->. But there are clear
>> objective disadvantages. The best way to get more *effective* light is
>> not brute force overkill, but to focus a smaller source efficiently toward
>> the center of your visual field.
>I'd disagree with this last point Donald. Reducing the periphery vision by
>using a highly focussed light not only reduces the amount of cave that
>you'll see, but it also makes it harder to move about. Travelling over
>uneven and awkward ground (e.g. a boulder slope) you are forced to stare at
>your feet to see where to take the next step. A wider spread of light means
>that your eyes are more fully utilised. The difference is much more marked
>when comparing focussed electrics against fan tailed carbides.
You make a good point here. I'd say that the carbide cap lamp
with a parabolic reflector gives an effect in between the totally
unfocused reflectorless fan-flame carbide light, and the very sharply
focused electric beam. Certainly the cap lamp gives ample peripheral
light even when focused as sharply as the line-source flame light permits.
But it's my personal feeling that even a focused electric, if using a bulb
of 2 watts or more, provides enough peripheral light that movement through
the cave is not much impaired. Perhaps people's visual abilities differ
enough that their preference would go one way or the other accordingly.
As for the amount of cave that one sees, it depends on the size of the
void. In small to moderate ones, the "ceiling burner" does light up more
cave. In big ones, its range is too short, and you can see more by
painting the far walls with a long-range focused beam.
--Donald Davis
Vaughan Thomas
dgd...@nyx10.nyx.net (DONALD G. DAVIS) wrote:
...........
> As for the amount of cave that one sees, it depends on the size of the
> void. In small to moderate ones, the "ceiling burner" does light up
more
> cave. In big ones, its range is too short, and you can see more by
> painting the far walls with a long-range focused beam.
>
> --Donald Davis
Actually, having caved quite a lot in areas with very big passages, I
would have to say that you see a great deal more with a carbide than an
electric.
As well as the light you generate yourself, the light from others
"floods" the passage very effectively. Three cavers with carbides can
illuminate the whole of a 50-100m wide passage to the point where you
can see every detail as you progress. If the three of them turned on
their (2W) reserve electrics, the passage is plunged into darkness
(tried this before).
I have replied to the original post elsewhere on whether to buy one.
They are not suitable for everyone, or every cave, but they are
"standard" for a majority of European cavers for very good reasons
based on experience. You have to remember that most European cavers
engaged in serious exploration since the 1940's were pushing deep
alpine caves. Carbides are the only realistic option for this; they are
unlikely to use a different lamp outside of exploration - and even the
less adventurous will follow the example of the "elite" w.r.t. gear
selection. Note: also why "frog" is only method of SRT in use - IRT is
unsuitable in alpine caves, and cannot gain a foothold in less taxing
caving regions.
Within Europe, the highest percentage of non-carbide cavers is in the
UK I would think. This is because the caves are less deep, wetter and
cap-lamps were traditionally very cheap and available (cap-lamps were
better than stinkies, and available before modern electric/carbides
were developed in the '70's).
Always fun to argue the toss about the unresolvable. The US has a
predominance of cave types dissimilar to other major population
centres; thus US cavers have developed techniques in isolation that
meet their requirements - thats just how it is. Nobody is going to
change anyone's mind about this. The only observation I would make is
that when US cavers go to more alpine regions (Mexico for instance), I
have noticed a trend to European techniques. Interesting how a species
will evolve to suit its environment, isn't it?
regards
Marbry Hardin
Having used 'ceiling burners', cap lamps, and various electrics, I would
have to disagree with most of D. Davis comments. Now, following that, I
think that most of it can be attributed to personal preference. The type
of cave can make a huge difference on what provides a suitable light.
Very dark muddy caves require more light than does nice dry fossil trunk
with clean light colored walls. Also, a 1'x2' crawl will require less
light than 60'x80' borehole.
To address a couple of specific points, first the issue of the belt
generator going out periodically. I had pretty much stopped using the
'flame of death' since I was doing more small caves, and I got tired of
having to keep from tipping all the water out of the generator. Recently
I purchased one of the new pressurized generators from Slovakia. I have
used it several times with it flaming out not once. Nor did it go out at
all from being tipped in any strange direction including upside down
briefly. The only problem has been from grit getting in the top of the
injector, but I am working on a carbide condom to remedy that. I ran the
generator through an 11 hour trip on one charge of carbide, and 2-3
water fills.
The second point is that the ceiling burners just produce a very bright
area light. Cap lamps just don't. I use different types of lights for
different types of caves and trips as I find it appropriate for the
conditions and my taste.
As for the original question, I have the petzl removable carbide burner
on the helmet above a spade mount bracket. Rather than a combination
with a duo, I have a couple of extra small lights on the sides of my
helmet. That makes it easy to change back and forth between carbide and
electric.
Marbry Hardin
TN
dtibbets
I have an aceto which I use sometimes. The generator and hose are a bit of
a pain, but the amount of light I get can't be beat. My usual light is a 12
led setup.
--
menews:94245797...@iris.nyx.net...
> "Nigel Robertson"
<ni...@dont-spam-me-im-vegetarian.easegill.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>
> >DONALD G. DAVIS <dgd...@nyx10.nyx.net> wrote in message
> >news:94242982...@iris.nyx.net...
> >> i...@caves.org (Alex Sproul) writes:
>
> >> users, which puzzles me. There may be psychological satisfaction in
> >> bathing one's surroundings in light radiating in all directions (would
> >> psychoanalysis postulate a sun-god complex? ;->. But there are clear
> >> objective disadvantages. The best way to get more *effective* light is
> >> not brute force overkill, but to focus a smaller source efficiently
toward
> >> the center of your visual field.
>