I carry a tiny handheld Light and Motion Sola Tech600 for my primary light while technical diving. I love being unencumbered. No cord. No canister. Lightweight for travel.
Some of my diving colleagues have asked about whether such a small light can have adequate runtime for two serious cave or technical dives in a day. The answer is unequivocally, “yes!” The Sola Tech600 offers up a robust nine hours maximum burn time. Better yet, you can easily monitor the remaining capacity as you dive. This feature alone provides an unprecedented advantage over other lights. It acts as a fuel gauge, letting you know when you should power back the light and conserve.
Here is how I make a dive. The light offers three power levels with 3, 6 and 9 hours of burn time respectively. When I start my dive, I test the light during my pre-dive check and turn it off until my team is ready to enter the cave. There is no risk in damaging the light by turning it on and off, as there can be with expensive HID bulbs. When I enter the cave, I use the lowest power while I do my underwater S-drill and get the reel into the cave. There is no need for blasting the cave with light while I am focused on running line. When I reach larger passages, I turn up the light to medium or high depending on my buddy’s brightness. As the lead diver, I often turn it to medium so I don’t overpower my friends and risk missing a light signal from them.
While the light has more than 75% charge, I see three green lights on my fuel gauge. As it drops, those light change to yellow. Below 50% they turn red, but remember, the still means you have half the time remaining and that’s 1.5, 3 or 4.5 hours! At 25% you will finally see flashing red lights. I simply throttle the light strength to the appropriate level to get me through my dives and light the cave appropriately. When I reach the cavern zone or decompression, I either turn off the light or leave it low.
Let’s face it, there are not too many people who spend more than 3 hours a day in the dark zone of their tech dives, but knowing you can actually have up to nine hours with a really bright light, is very comforting. Manage your light resources and use the high power when you need it and you can enjoy the luxury of a tiny, comfortable and capable hand held light.
