# Night Shift



## bykfixer (Aug 12, 2019)

I got word last week that there's going to be a waterline operation at my work that involves turning off a rather large water main. Being a water main that feeds restaraunts, local factories and a substantial amount of homes it has to be done at night after most folks go to bed. 

Boss asks if I'd volunteer. Well I'm helping a guy in his 70's who lives way out in the country so my first thought was it aint real cool to have homie driving back to work after dark and going back home at 3am. Sure I'll do it. 

This morning it occured to me that being a flashaholic means while the waterline is off I get to play with flashlights. I also remembered most construction workers carry $5 junk that will grow dimmer as the night wears on. 

So far the roster to carry is based on runtime since the area will be lit by diesel powered sunshine. Yet those light plants create lots of shadows. I have 2 headlamps ready, a Malkoff NLL clad 6P, a couple of long run Maglites, a Pelican 2360, Elzetta Bones, PK PR-1 and SureFire G2x Pro. Pocket carry is essential and wrist lanyards are a good idea. A good night to try out the updated 2D Maglite and ML25 with low settings too. 

I may loan out an ML25, the PR-1 or the Pelican as I have spares. But the Elzetta, the 6P… no freakin' way.


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## peter yetman (Aug 12, 2019)

How many weeks are you doing this one?
Looking forward to the photos.
P


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## Nitroz (Aug 12, 2019)

Photos are a must!


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## bykfixer (Aug 12, 2019)

If all goes well tonight will be the only night for this operation. 

Another night will involve shutting off the same main and connecting a new line installed beside the existing, only deeper to accomodate removing a hill of a country road. Cutting off the hill would make the old line too shallow. 

We watch over roadway improvements in rural areas where progress means lots more traffic going to and from new schools, businesses and homes. This one is straightening out curves, flattening hills and generally makes it safer for John Q Suburbanite to check their emails while commuting.


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## Nitroz (Aug 12, 2019)

bykfixer said:


> If all goes well tonight will be the only night for this operation.
> 
> Another night will involve shutting off the same main and connecting a new line installed beside the existing, only deeper to accomodate removing a hill of a country road. Cutting off the hill would make the old line too shallow.
> 
> We watch over roadway improvements in rural areas where progress means lots more traffic going to and from new schools, businesses and homes. This one is straightening out curves, flattening hills and generally makes it safer for *John Q Suburbanite to check their emails while commuting.*



This is so true nowadays.


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## bykfixer (Aug 12, 2019)

Bring on the night.
I forgot the Pelican 2360 but had the 360 lumen Coast HP7 in the truck. That and the 2D Mag in the package were lights I spoke of in some of my initial postings here at CPF. The Mag was used a few minutes and put back into an incan package way back in 015 and still goes where I go. 





The road that is being widened, flattened and straightened. 
To the right that giant Tonka toy digs to find the water line while the one in the center moves diesel powered sunshine into position. 






Pre-assembled section of waterline built during the day.
A storm sewer pipe is to cross the road where the giant Tonka toy in the previous photo sits. It is designed to go through the waterline unless they lower a segment of said water main. 






The water main that is in the way of progress. 
My role is to ensure the asbestos cement pipe is properly handled during demolition and disposal. I also write reports of who, what, when, where and why things take place and if things go wrong notify the proper officials. 






It's past 9pm so the water main is turned off and the crew waits for it to drain. 
These folks began at 6am today and are now zooming from lil Ceasers pizza and lot of Mt Dew at 10:30pm.

The night is just getting started. If all goes well all I'll need is my double clutch headlamp to find the porta-john. If not, I'm ready to lend a hand. It's funny how life works. This young crew are the offspring of youngsters I worked with 25 years ago.


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## Nitroz (Aug 12, 2019)

bykfixer said:


> Bring on the night.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Very cool! I don't know if those youngsters appreciate your lights as much as we do.


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## bykfixer (Aug 12, 2019)

They use celphones these days. lol

Correction, I said 10:30 in my previous post but it was 9:30. 

Edit: while waiting on the pipe to drain……





Shows a shadow cast by the diesel powered sunshine. 





Not a problem when my PR-1 gets the call of duty.


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## bykfixer (Aug 13, 2019)

Workers dressed in plastic bags
This stuff aint no joke. The unprotected fellow on the right was in charge. Young guy, full of vim and vigar but will someday be all stoved up like me and the County guy who shut off the water. By 4:30 am even the youngsters were whipped and woozy. 





Old pipe removed, new pipe set in place. 
Time to fasten screws at each end. That takes some time as applying equal pressure in equal amounts around the pipe is critical for a good grip of new iron pipe to old, somewhat fragile asbestos cement pipe. 
Note the shadow the worker is dealing with. 






A bit closer shows the worker dealing with a shadow. 
A headlamp sure would have been handy. 

I have watched over dozens of these things and this was by far the youngest and most eager crew I've over seen over the decades. However youth and inexperience costed a lot of time. Wisdom gained over the years would have ensured some basic tools like proprietary wrenches (ratcheting box ends etc) flashlights and patience would have made things go a lot smoother. Oh, that's easy for me to say now. They were not looking for a mentor, but did appreciate an inspector lighting up shadows with an Elzetta Bones from time to time. 


Some beam pix while waiting for things to come together:





Typical 2am rural setting






Lovin that old school Maglite drill beam. 
The new 2D has 193 lumens on high to provide a better spill than the previous but still has a Maglite pencil lead beam to drill through darkness. 






The 320 lumen SureFire G2x Pro beam aint bad at all. 





The Bones is a lot less harsh. 
The workers had never seen a light that small and that bright that did not cause them to squint when I lit shadows for them. I seriously doubt I converted any of the celphone light users to better lighting tools. Especially if they knew how much a Bones costs. But they were glad for the assistance it provided them at times. 


By 5am the water was back on as a rain shower began. 

One more pic: 





My favorite flashlight ever……


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## KITROBASKIN (Aug 13, 2019)

Great stuff fixer.
Thinking you are not a government worker?


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## bykfixer (Aug 13, 2019)

What makes you say _not _a government worker Kitro? lol. 

I'm a consultant brought in to watch over projects and act as a sorta translator between government agencies. The local agency is the one that hires the contractor to improve things. The state agency maintains the improvements when done. They reimburse the local agency half the cost when it is completed. They get improvements to state roads for half price yet demand 100 percent of the compliance with their specs. Often the local agency does not understand the rules required by the state so my company intercedes in the process to make sure the local gets reimbursed by the state with more efficiency. 

I forgot to show life without and with a Streamlight Double Clutch at 2am in a rural setting. 




When walking around on uneven terrain it's pretty dark. 






A spot beam highlights details or lights distance better. 







I use flood the most for walking around.
It also greatly reduces blinding the folks around me when I forget to turn it off in the diesel powered sunshine scenarios. 







Twist left for flooder. Right for thrower. 
It has the option of a usb rechargeable battery pack or 3aaa's. 125 or 30 lumens. And it's real easy to operate.


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## Chauncey Gardiner (Aug 13, 2019)

The Streamlight flood/spot quick-change - Very cool! :thumbsup:


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## BluGrass (Aug 13, 2019)

Old pipe removed, new pipe set in place. 
Time to fasten screws at each end. That takes some time as applying equal pressure in equal amounts around the pipe is critical for a good grip of new iron pipe to old, somewhat fragile asbestos cement pipe. 
Note the shadow the worker is dealing with. 




Am I correct that the blue fittings on the end are the adapter fittings for ductile to the asbestos piping?




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## bykfixer (Aug 13, 2019)

Correct Blu. 

That is the weak link to the whole thing. First time I had ever seen that model. Real nice adpater if assembled properly. One end (at the top of the photo) went together in a few minutes. The one closest to the camera took a while due to a very slight misalignment between the ductile iron and asbestos pipe. 

The workers were real tired by then. Working in the heat all day then well past midnight before they were trying to figure out the issue was. Stirred up some old ghosts of working a full from sunrise to……sunrise again. I had worked all day too but not in the heat. We were all whipped by 5am. 

The insta-flood setting on the headlamp kept me from tripping over my own feet by 2am CG. Apparently that one is popular with mechanics but I find it very handy for home repairs, at work at night or just taking a stroll in the woods.


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## scout24 (Aug 13, 2019)

Nice beamshots, Bykfixer. 👍


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## id30209 (Aug 13, 2019)

^^^ and interesting read.


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## greenpondmike (Aug 14, 2019)

I like that maglite and the headlight the best. All of them were neat bykfixer. Cool beamshots--I like beamshots.


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## Nitroz (Aug 14, 2019)

That headlight is an awesome design with the filter to turn the spot beam into flood. Nice! 

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Candlepowerforums mobile app


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## KITROBASKIN (Aug 14, 2019)

Sir fixer:
I try to read everything you write down on CPF, and fondly remember your generosity. The question I posed succeeded in you making another interesting post! 

You tell it like it is.


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## bykfixer (Aug 15, 2019)

There was a time not that long ago I would have had an incan minimag with 2 year old batteries in it. Funny how life works. Next time I'll carry a 300 lumen minimag. 

In a couple of weeks there'll be a repeat of the operation. I'll still have the headlamps, Maglites, the Coast and Elzetta Bones as they ride in the truck. Another SureFire 6P will be used (w/M361W) a PKDL PL2, a SOG DE-05 and perhaps a classic S&R light from pre-Maglite days like a 5D 3rd gen Kel-Lite or a Malkoff'd 3D Maglite. Or the older fellow may say "screw day work I'll do the next one".


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## PartyPete (Aug 16, 2019)

Loaning lights to coworkers?! The phrase alone is almost enough to give me an anxiety attack.


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## bykfixer (Aug 28, 2019)

Another all nighter is slated for tonight. Paving of a bank parking lot in a well lit metropolis where there will be a lot of action in a small area. Tonights assignment won't involve much excitement but the 5 arm chair quarterback engineers some 500 miles away will be critiquing the final product from their computer screen. 
The big challenge will be photographing the during and after. 

Now most never consider how much pitch (ie slope) is built in specific areas of a given parking lot until it rains and they are walking in puddles. Yet these 5 engineers have drawn on a flat piece of paper a bunch of numbers that a typical construction worker is supposed to duplicate with less than accurate materials and tools. The story behind this one is a large company has bought a bunch of small banks that did not have ADA compliant entrances. ADA is American Disabilities Act, which is a bearuracracy tasked with ensuring folks in wheels chairs, the blind or other folks with limited abilities can safely and easily enter these banks. The same folks who brought you brail numbers at the drive up ATM designed these changes required to this particular bank. 

The design involves some really really really flat areas of a parking lot, yet water is not supposed to pond in these areas. Numerous projects have taken place where the contractor understands standing water means frozen ponds in the winter. They built things to shed the water. Yet the slopes were deemed too steep to meet ADA requirements. Think about it this way. You are driving down the road with your right side front tire going flat. Your steering would naturally pull you towards the right. Well the thinking by the ADA folks is a sidewalk with too much slope would be the same for a person in a wheelchair. Makes sense but… physics requires some slope to make water drain away from the sidewalk. The engineers have used theoretical numbers based on fluid dynamics to imagine water can drain at really flat grades. They have applied those numbers to a piece of paper the contractor is supposed to match. 

So after previous jobs were finished the engineers looked at grade numbers provided by inspectors and said "too steep, fix it". Contractors fixed areas to be flatter and bank managers said "my parking lot has ponds". Again the engineers said "fix it". Contractors said "ugh, ok". Later the banking company said "why didn't those inspectors make sure it was right the first time?" Each fix meant banking customers were hampered by construction according to the bank owners so they were rightly upset. My job is such that if it goes well they say "what a great engineer". If it goes bad they say "hang the inspector". My goal is to hear "that engineer is great". Luckily I have some Rainman in me so when the engineers are patting each other on the back I'm off somewhere else imagining in my mind the finished product of another ridiculous design that can in theory work, only if things line up correctly. 

Will it be another successful project or another flop? Time will tell. But like Rainman not being near a TV when Judge Wopner comes on, I tend to become frazzled when the armchair quarterbacks start their critiques from a comfy chair in a temperature controlled office behind a computer screen. So my bosses are left to do the politicing if need be. It's a thankless role to be an inspector sometimes, but it sure beats sitting behind a desk all day dressed like everybody else in the building while plotting to over throw the guy above them and pretending to like a certain football team because the boss likes that team. I make my living watching giant Tonka toys. Tonights toys will be eating asphalt and drinking jet fuel while they munch on a paved parking lot, then spread out black goo and spray paint lines over it. My role will be setting a digital level at certainareas and taking pictures. Sure beats the job those engineers have.


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## ven (Aug 28, 2019)

Damn , missed this till now. Awesome stuff mr fixer, love your threads. Great pics and write up, tonka toys and flashlights.............can it get any better
As for headlamps, i have it attached permanently(day time use mainly) and could not live without it now. I wonder just a couple of years back how i managed.......either balancing or working with 1 hand!. Still have a bones, love that light, still got the throw optic in. Not had much use of late, but as darker nights slowly role in, it will have its time again

:kewlpics:


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## thermal guy (Aug 29, 2019)

I been on the fence with getting a Bones.Think I’m going to order one on Friday now. That beam looks perfect for working outside or even in the woods.


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## bykfixer (Aug 29, 2019)

The sight was a bank parking lot. The mission was to observe a paving operation where a small contractor took the existing top portion off and reapplied a new one. 
To the right of the photo are head engineer and a trainee she has assigned me while I train to be his boss. Quite an odd thought really, but the young lad was hired as an inspector trainee so he is my first assignment to train while I'm a manager in training. They are standing on the critically flat concrete areas I mentioned in my previous post. 

So head engineer boss lady is on site "willing to assist" which in plain english means "willing to critique every pebble, every shade of gray, everything in some attempt to make sure the designers ridiculous theories are correctly applied by ordinary construction workers who like me had not slept all day and were about to embark on a 16 hour shift. 

The boss lady scheduled a meeting for the trainee and I to meet another theorist prior to starting work. Turns out this aderall using rookie wanna be guy has her convinced he has his act together. My initial impression was he had his head up his @$$, and after spending a few hours with the guy my view did not change, or at least in a positive way. My trainee was impressed with his wiz-bang sales pitch as showed the milenial lots of computer short cuts and my trainee just loves taking short cuts in life. Free free free… yup you can lose 20 pounds while sitting in an easy chair eating ice cream with this short cut. My engineer boss lady was impressed with the boston red sox logo on wiz bang dudes wedding ring. He clearly noticed I was not one to quickly plunk down my rent money for his snake oil salesman charms.

The tone for the evening was set and clearly my fun with flashlights was going to be thwarted by stupidity. I had my SOG dark energy light clipped to my trouser pocket as a primary. Being a DE-05 is crisp white beam'd thrower naturally wiz-bang guy asks "is that an atomic light?" while the trainee asks "does it strobe?" Ugh!! So what happens when a snake oil salesman realizes you aint buying? He becomes your fan as he tries to figure out why you aint falling for his bs. So I had a follower and the trainee was more proud of me being his boss than ever. So while trying to discern what needs to be checked over at work and how to photograph them in a dark-ish scenario where long shutter speeds cause nearby artificial lights and long shutter speeds to create blurry, harsh photos unless I can think of ideas to reduce it. 





An example of a photo to delete. 
With the distractions by my "fan club", numerous photos were turning out this way as my less than fresh brain was still trying to figure out which flashlight was correct for a given photo. My Streamlight head lamp would not provide enough light on flood but too much on spot. The Bones was too bright, the G2x Pro was either too low or too high. Mag's were in my truck, and the fan club was continuing to pluck my nerves. But at least the nit-picking boss had left. 

I was carrying a vaper in my shirt pocket but decided to have a real cigarette to get away from the fan club, jot down a few thoughts and clear my mind of clutter so I could decide which flashlight would be best for those dam pictures. 





My PKDL clipped to a ball cap. 
While setting in my truck having a cigarette and jotting down notes for writing a synopsis of the project from start to finish my little edc was very handy on low. Viola! It occured to me my PR-1 with a Deer Park brand water bottle cap over the end will be bright enough to compete with other lights and be close enough to quicken shutter speeds. 






Heck yeah! PR-1 with difuser did the trick. 

Next time I'll carry my Streamlight ProTac HL4. Nice, floody beam up to 2200 lumens.
So by this time it's 2:30am, aderall has worn off in the wiz-bang dude so he's left to find a hotel, my trainee is taking a nap and I'm trying out a new vape device sent to me by Vaporesso. A large cup of McCoffee has my energy level in decent shape and my head aint swimming anymore. At this point I just wanted the folks to finish paving so I could go home. Home is 2 hours away so by 5am I was thinking the 2 hour drive was a bad idea. By 8 I was zonked at a Holiday Inn Express for a couple of hours. 

I ended up getting quite a few keeper photos on my point n shoot work cam and at some point when they are downloaded to a computer a few wll be posted in this thread showing which light provided the right beam and intensity for the given situation. If my foggy brain can recall the Streamlight double clutch, the SOG and PR-1 were the most used. But after working 4-16 hour days in a row then a 26 hour day my brain is not really all that dependable today. This assignment cannot be over soon enough to suit me.


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## CREEXHP70LED (Aug 31, 2019)

Interesting job. I like the Bones flood pattern it's making me think to change out the lens in my Charlie to the flood lens, or buy a Bones with a flood lens. I know what you mean about those Adderall guys, they can be quite obnoxious to say the least. I used to be prescribed it and took 30-45 mg a day, but I was very quite and calm when I was on it. I actually get more work done on Xanax with much more clarity if you can believe that. I am the opposite of most people I guess.

Anyway, thanks for all the great pics and beamshots. I used to work outside in pitch black for about 1.5 to 2 hours before the sun started to rise. Back then I used to have a 300 or 400 lumen Olight S1 Baton clipped to my hat, I used to use RCR123A cells and also SF123A primaries. I was known as the guy with the bright light as everyone else used 40 lumen maglites. We were all spread out by hundreds of yards so the downside was everyone knew where I was until the sun came up.

I ended up buying a few S1 Batons for other workers, but ironically they never used them at work because they were too nice to use at work they said. A complete waste in my mind. To each their own I guess.


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## bykfixer (Aug 31, 2019)

Thatz the regular lens on the Bones. I just metered the camera to show how wide the spill is in low light.


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## CREEXHP70LED (Aug 31, 2019)

bykfixer said:


> Thatz the regular lens on the Bones. I just metered the camera to show how wide the spill is in low light.





Wow, it really looked like the flood lens. LOL! I do like the flood for up close work it is really nice.


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## PhotonWrangler (Sep 2, 2019)

Props to all of you who toil in the middle of the night for our benefit. :rock:


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## RWT1405 (Sep 2, 2019)

Thanks for sharing!


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## bykfixer (Sep 2, 2019)

Beats the crap out of being around the nit-picker bosses. 

Next one is another waterline adventure. I'm thinking the roster will include vintage LED lights by Pentagon (L2), a Pelican (2390) and perhaps my vintage MD2 hi/lo from Gene's Kroll clicky days. It has a sweet M61NL in it.


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## desertrunner (Sep 6, 2019)

When I hear "nigh shift", its the one thing that drives me to love USB rechargeable lights even more. I like that I can run them all night or shift and just plug them back in during my off time.


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## bykfixer (Sep 25, 2019)

Tonights lineup: L to R; 
- SOG DE 05 550 lumen circa 2016.
- Pentagon L2 circa 2007?
- Pentagon X3 with a 700 lumen LED prototype drop in by FourLeaf Flashlights. 
- Streamlight ProTac HL4
- Streamlight Stinger LED
- Bones
- Bravo
- Malkoff MD2 hi/lo Kroll era with M61NL

Of course my edc PKDL lights will ride in my trouser pockets too. I still get my ya ya's whipping out those photon cannons and hearing "holy $**+ those things are bright". 

Pix later.


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## bykfixer (Sep 26, 2019)

So this one character was trying to find something with a shovel and asked his helper for some light. 




Celphone? Fail

What's a flashaholic to do, just watch? 

(minion voice) Uh, no. 





PKDL PR-1 on medium.


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## Monocrom (Sep 26, 2019)

Nothing more frustrating than those times when all you can do is watch. :sigh:


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## ven (Sep 26, 2019)

I need to do a night shift with mr fixer, also a security night shift with Monocrom!!! and i hate nights! Cool pics


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## peter yetman (Sep 26, 2019)

Especially when you know you could do it better, but keep your mouth taped.
P


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## Monocrom (Sep 26, 2019)

ven said:


> I need to do a night shift with mr fixer, also a security night shift with Monocrom!!! and i hate nights! Cool pics



Well, if you hate boredom, a shift at my job site will feel like absolute torture.


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## ven (Sep 26, 2019)

:laughing:


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## bykfixer (Sep 26, 2019)

Won't be boring any longer with Ven there.




peter yetman said:


> Especially when you know you could do it better, but keep your mouth taped.
> P


I gave a flashlight to the guy on the left of the photo (the guy you see the back of his hard hat). A 3C Maglite actually. He was the guy in charge of shutting off the waterline and did not have a flashlight. Well being a flashaholic I just happened to have an extra nip ML50 and some batteries in my truck. 

Yikes, I ended up regretting that after the 25th time that idiot shined it in my eyes. First off he could not figure out how to install the batteries. 
Then twisting the tailcap all the way down was a daunting task. :thinking:

Ok, so once that was finally achieved the guy did not seem to realize a flashlight has an off switch. I honestly felt sorry for that flashlight. Unsure if someone he blinded with it would take it ram it up his bah-hashna or if he was going to drop it from his back pocket as he carried it bezel up, switched on blinding anybody who got within 25 feet……it's just a matter of time before that Maglite ML50 is squandered. :shakehead

Anyway, all went well for a while as a waterline made of asbestos was tied to a new one at three locations. Once the monkey with a Maglite had figured out what water shut off valves to close the contractor worked diligently to assemble parts and pieces of pipes to tie a new metal line to the old one. Well all good plans, no good deed goes unpunished and all that, one of the three crews forgot to tighten some crucial bolts of a section of new pipe clamped to the old one. So after working since 6am on Wednesday morning it now was 2:30am on Thursday and the fellows had a 6 foot deep hole full of water to drain and a pipe to fix. Eventually it got done and everybody went home safely so it was a good day (or night in this case).

So I had a chance to compare Bones vs Bravo and on high the beams are so close in actual ability it was a tie in which performed better. So walking around with a Bones pocket clipped on the left, Bravo switched to low clipped to the right it was a mighty fine dynamic duo like Batman and Robin. Need a lot off light whip out the Bones. Just need a little, whip out the Bravo much like having a rifle and pistol both at the ready. 

But that ProTac HL4 was used the most. I have it setup to start on 60 lumen low with a 600 medium. Due to a frosted optic I could light up the hole full of water without blinding the poor suckers who had the task of tightening bolts while sinking into mud up to their knees as they hurredly tightened bolts on a clamp trying to stop a major leak. 600 lit up the hole in an impressive fashion and with all that water in a hole it added light to dripping water from a pipe like each drip seemed to glow in the dark. The floody beam (no punintended) caused light to literally bend underneath of the pipe all nice n gentle-like so nobody was saying "dude stop with the flashlight". By 4:30am the crew was whipped and blinded by the others stabbing their eyes with typical throwey beamed lights or celphone lights. When I lit the hole with the Streamlight it was like the sun was shining again in one sense but in another sense it was like providing the crew both sunshine and polarized sunglasses to obliderate the glare. 

It really felt good to help out with proper lighting in a bad situation so now, instead of setting on a shelf collecting dust that HL4 will ride in my truck whenever a night shift duty occurs.


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## bykfixer (Sep 26, 2019)

So now for a few beam pix. 
I enjoy checking out a beam characteristic without distractions by nearby objects at times to see how a light can throw, spill and both. So I spent my lunch break shining the quiver of flashlights down an unlit gravel road. The light colored gravel allowed my celcam to capture the details in low light better. It also aided in determining why the HL4 was the correct tool to help light the hole full of water mentioned in the previous post. 






Some free lumens provided by diesel powered sunshine light plants and nearby street lights. 

To me the ones that stood out most were lights with aneamic output in todays 4 digit lumen technological electric candles. The Pentagon L2 and Malkoff MD2 with an NL showed me what all the fuss must've been about back when LED tech was just approaching the 200 lumen bar. I really like the Pentagon L2 (and similar Pelican 2390) beam. Like the Bones and Bravo their beams are pretty similar. The MD2 with an NL is just a sweet flashlight. But not having a wrist lanyard meant my Kroll era Malkoff stayed safely stored in the truck. Aint like there's a whole bunch of vintage Malkoffs on eBay waiting for me to lose mine. SN 1271 means it aint one of the first batches but it still one I'd prefer to not lose on a construction site. 










Not bad for under 200 lumens 

The X3 with a prototype LED was also impressive. Mine has a twisty and Pentagon chose mega-stiff springs so thumb fatigue becomes an issue for short term lighting times. Unlike SureFire and others the Pentagon twisty is a brute force number my thumb aint real fond of. Plus it gets real hot real fast. 




Sweet. Now to find a clicky for it. 


Now it was obvious why police like a Stinger so much. It can be a retina sizzler when needed or a mighty fine search and rescue light. 




It sucks to be on the wrong end of that beam. 
But great for finding a lost kitty cat or checking the back yard for burglars. 

I brought a SOG with me that also has a pretty potent beam for such a small light. Another retina scorcher. 




Yikes that thing makes you squint. 

The Elzettas were compared and as the photos show have a good combo of spot and spill. 










The Bones was aimed more in the air to show max throw potential where the Bravo was aimed to compare spot to spill. 

And last but not least, theProTac HL4 and it's tidal wave of floody beam. 




Lots of light without the urge to squint.


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## Monocrom (Sep 26, 2019)

Have to agree, Ven would likely make it an exciting shift. 

As for a good Maglite being squandered, I know what that's like. Five years ago, worked with an older security officer as part of a two man team keeping America's future safe at the (mostly Freshman) dorms of Marymount Manhattan College. Only security job I actually miss because I was part of a team that guarded something important.... sleeping young students. 

Anyway, noticed that my partner didn't have a good light on him. Gifted him my 1st Generation LED 2AA Mini-Maglite. After a few weeks, he told me the "funny" story of how he lost it. So normally most security officers change into their uniform at work. Some of us will wear the lower part of the uniform before arriving. Black pants, black shoes, black-colored belt. So all you have to do is change your shirt. Even those who change into their full uniform will keep a belt already in the loops of their uniform pants.

Well, not the guy I worked with. He'd change his entire outfit. Including taking his belt off before the start of his shift, and looping it through his uniform pants. At the end of the shift, he did that again; only back onto his casual pants. This uniform change took him forever! So one night, he forgot to hold onto the light's belt pouch while taking his belt off. Light went tumbling down and ended up at the back of a table in the locker room. And for some bizarre reason, he didn't notice that. When he came back the next day, it was gone. 

The whole thing was just so stupid, but what can you do. I even told him immediately after gifting it to him that it wasn't some cheap light. That all he had to do was once in awhile change the batteries. No need for a bulb change. And the light would last him many long years. I didn't bother gifting him another light after his "funny" story.


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## Chauncey Gardiner (Sep 26, 2019)

bykfixer said:


> So this one character was trying to find something with a shovel and asked his helper for some light.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



:shakehead It never matters how bright your flashlight is. The guy with the weak light will always keep shining his.  :laughing:


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## bykfixer (Sep 26, 2019)

Amen CG. 
After a few minutes I just walked away. 

Mono, when I gave that guy the package I kinda felt like it was not going to end well for that flashlight. But I did not realize he'd blind everybody with it. 
Good thing he aint smart enough to wear a headlamp. 
Good gosh.

He did tell me at one point he liked my headlamp idea. I remembered having a spare and though for about 0.0008 seconds giving it to him, but then he blinded me once again with his Maglite. 
One of the workers said "holy $**+ that guys a monkey with a Maglite". lol
That's where that came from. 

Most of the fellows out there are off spring of dudes my age that like me, used a minimag way back in the day. So these lads been brain washed into thinking celphones and those "atomic"'numbers are proper lighting tools. The Maglite brand is foreign to many of those folks. And Streamlight? What's that? 

I enjoy telling them stories of some of the shinanigans I used to get into with their dads back in the day.


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## bykfixer (Aug 31, 2020)

I started working the night shift recently. Paving. 

Now us flashaholics get all twisted when we see folks using celphones for lighting. These cats didn't even have celphones. As in a group of ten chaps who work the midnight shift for a living and none had any lighting tools at all. 

The paver broke and nobody had a flashlight, except me. Now I could have whipped out three lights on my person and offered assistance. What I did instead was walk back to my truck and grab a brand new nip aaa minimag and hand it to the foreman. 

Now as for me I failed as a flashaholic. Yeah my 2D Maglite, my headlamp and my edc lights had fresh fuel but my Bones had low batteries (and no spares with me) so an incan minimag was probably brighter. 
I'm still kicking myself.


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## id30209 (Aug 31, 2020)

bykfixer said:


> I started working the night shift recently. Paving.
> 
> Now us flashaholics get all twisted when we see folks using celphones for lighting. These cats didn't even have celphones. As in a group of ten chaps who work the midnight shift for a living and none had any lighting tools at all.
> 
> ...



Savage... I would have done the same LOL


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## cp2315 (Aug 31, 2020)

lol
I am sure that you will be back, over prepared this time! 



bykfixer said:


> I started working the night shift recently. Paving.
> 
> Now us flashaholics get all twisted when we see folks using celphones for lighting. These cats didn't even have celphones. As in a group of ten chaps who work the midnight shift for a living and none had any lighting tools at all.
> 
> ...


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## bykfixer (Sep 1, 2020)

yup, I was locked and loaded with batteries and spare lights then "rumble, rumble, rumble" rain out. 
My lawn liked it though. 
So after sleeping all day and being coffee'd up by sundown I'll just clean and lube up a few favorites and charge up my RCR's and Eneloops…… while binge watching the old 90's tv show Crime Story. Love, love, love the authentic scenery and those classic cars of 1963.


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## bykfixer (Sep 2, 2020)

So do you really need a flashlight with all these free lumens around? 





Hmmm, perhaps shadows are an issue? 





You betcha, and I needed all 650 lumens from my Bravo to see this issue of a blemish in the new asphalt mat.


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## bykfixer (Sep 3, 2020)

In the land of free lumens shadows are ridiculous. So I dusted off an old thrower that used to be the one I used a lot when I first joined here. 





The Coast HP7R. 
A light that can be plugged in via micro usb or the battery pack could be recharging while you ran it on supplied aaa cells while it charges. 





It stated 400 meter throw. 
Well that's pretty optomistic. It'll light a reflector easily at that distance but is really useful to about 150 to 200 meters. Rated at 250 lumens that was still pretty good considering. 





If you adjust the head just right you can cast that awful square a couple hundred feet on a wall if you choose to. 

The deal with this light is that it cuts through thick humidity and free lumens for a 100 feet or more, so I can see an issue at a distance and decide if it warrants addressing up close. After a few evenings I realized a zoomie would be very handy but my Coast HP7 beam did not cut through the night quite as much as I'd like. So it dawned on me the 7R was much better at it because it zooms out farther and create a more narrow beam. 

Yeah, tint and corona etc are not pretty but it's function over flashion at times like this.


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## aznsx (Sep 4, 2020)

Personally, I'd come up with an excuse to use that light just because it says 'Mugen' on it!...but that's just me.


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## bykfixer (Sep 5, 2020)

^^^^^ this from a person with "nsx" in the user name? 





More Power……


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## bykfixer (Sep 6, 2020)

The past week at work on Main St USA the lighting needs were more about competing with various lighting from many directions. Shadows, shadows, shadows. It showcased why a modern flashlight is a great tool to have. On night one I was the only person with a flashlight. By weeks end there were a few with one. 

The cool beam light was the most useful at cutting through the light pollution. My 600+ lumen Elzetta Bones with it's fairly neutral tint seemed weak at times. To confirm I used a Bravo AVS and saw the same result. Yet my 6200 kelvin PKDL FL2 looked much more potent even though output and beam style are practically the same. 

Once things are done on the Dirty Boulevard we will move to a more normal after dark setting. Less Vegas, more stars. So I look forward to using some warmer lights in the country side where moon light can be enough to guide your foot steps.


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## bykfixer (Sep 11, 2020)

The most recent night duty is to watch over a tractor that eats asphalt and drinks jet fuel. 
Paving some roads involves removing the old top layer with a "milling machine". It's kind of like a tractor operated wood planer. Only much larger. The material removes goes onto a conveyor on the front of the tractor that deposits the ground up asphalt into dump truck beds. 

My job is to observe traffic, watch the depth of material cut off, ensure no weakened thin layer is left over, general cleanup when done and a few other things. It's not a bad gig. And the location at this point is a country road that goes past ginormous houses on the James River about a half mile from the road. Put it this way, in the 1.2 miles there are 4 houses. Each lot is about a quarter mile wide and one was owned by country singer Jimmy Dean when he was alive. I'm actually sitting at the entrance to that estate as I type this. Ordinary folks driving down this road would likely think it's just another paved driveway as there is nothing fancy at a glance. 

Being out of the metropolitan means stars and darkness. The city is a glow off in the distance. It's the kind of place a barking dog can be heard about a mile away. So with an asphalt eating tractor, lots of dump trucks and cleanup equipment moving about it's probably the most noise this area has heard since the last big "ho-down" Jimmy Dean put on. 

Aside from my EDC lights and helmet lamp I brought a new one to my collection. A SOG DE-01, which is a 1x 123 thrower. At only 188 lumens on high it has a fixed beam not unlike a Maglite ML 25. It used an XPG R5 LED when they were produced. In the dark conditions it does a great job.

A couple of photos: 





What it looks like as the train approaches





What my DE-01 does to darkness





The asphalt being deposited into the dump truck





The giant planer machine


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## bykfixer (Sep 13, 2020)

The other night a surefire lego got the nod to battle light pollution. 





E2D LED body with a 350 lumen 3600k Tana module
Incan head, scout tail cap, long two way clip, primary fuel. 

Same crew, different location. The location was a semi-dark cut through between Main St USA and Maple Ave USA at the outskirts of Metropolis. An interstate is also nearby. The places that were lit up were gas stations with cool white parking lot lighting. The kinda place that closes at 10pm but you can still use your plastic to get fuel. But in between you can look up on a clear night and see satellites moving across the sky if you look hard enough. 

So the incan looking beam from my flashlight was spot on this time. At one point I needed to show a fellow something about 100 feet away so I deployed the E2 from my trouser pocket, aimed it in the direction and the warm beam acted like a light orange sharpie on a white piece of paper through the cool white light polution. "See, over there" I said. The foreman's response shocked me. "Is that a SureFire E2?" he says. My kid boss with his celphone for light says "what's a SureFire?" The foreman says "if you gotta ask you can't afford it" lol. The foreman is a guy I've known for 25+ years. He remembers when an incan minimag was a super good tool to have at night and he thought my lego was actually an incan light. The conversation quickly turned back to work related but it was pretty neat to have a construction worker recognize the famous E2 flashlight. 





The incan looking beam did the trick.





Without a flashlight


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## bigburly912 (Sep 13, 2020)

This is being done all up and down US23 Mr.Fixer. Stay safe out there. I’ve seen 3 horrible wrecks within a few miles of my workplace the last couple weeks. Don’t know why people can’t slow down in a work zone.


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## greenpondmike (Sep 13, 2020)

Is it just my android or is a lot of those pictures not showing up? Hello to you bykfixer. I would have enjoyed being out in the country with a bunch of flashlights- especially incans. The only picture I saw on that area was the one with the train in it.

Edit: I got back on the page and all the pictures showed. I always enjoy your flashlight beam pictures.


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## PhotonWrangler (Sep 13, 2020)

greenpondmike said:


> Is it just my android or is a lot of those pictures not showing up? Hello to you bykfixer. I would have enjoyed being out in the country with a bunch of flashlights- especially incans. The only picture I saw on that area was the one with the train in it.



I'm seeing all of the pictures. Your browser security settings might be blocking photos hosted on third party sites.


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## greenpondmike (Sep 13, 2020)

Thanks, but it somehow got fixed when I got back on the page.


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Sep 14, 2020)

bykfixer said:


> [snip]
> 
> 
> 
> ...



There's something magical about warm white LEDs illuminating the dark between two cool white lamps. Love the photos, fixer :twothumbs


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## bykfixer (Sep 15, 2020)

Glad the photos work for you mr pond. 

Yeah, that contrast of tint was a great thing to see Jean-Luc. 

Last night the Bones got the most use. Sometimes to look for eyes in the distance while taking a nature call break. Other times just to see the pavement exposed after the asphalt eater had done its thing and sweepers had cleaned off the leftover crumbs. I have to decide if what they left needs a trim or if pavement remaining needs re-enforcement. The triple beam of the Bones meant I could see potential problems at a distance by the hot spot, the middle beam shows me things up close without being too bright and the broad spill keeps me from getting run over. 

Tonight we move back to a place where the top surface of pavement was removed to cover it up with an experimental asphalt mix. Being the mixture is an experiment means lots of bosses will be around. If all goes well lots of office dwellers will be patting each other on the back. If not "who was the inspector?" will be the topic of discussion in their offices tomorrow. Luckily this time I'm low guy on the totum pole. 

My daily supervisor is a young, up and comer so he will be facing a big test tonight. He will be interviewed by folks with PhD's, carrying clip boards and cameras. Part of me misses all that attention as I've been in his shoes a dozen times. Part of me thinks 'better you than me kid's and part of me thinks "which flashlight will be best tonight?" I'll focus on the third option. In the meantime I will present my kid boss an NIP Energizer hardcase so he won't embarass himself by trying to light an area with a celphone that some PhD wants to see


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## knucklegary (Sep 15, 2020)

Me thinks Flood.. If possible hi-cri so all the clip board holders can view in HD?


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## bykfixer (Sep 16, 2020)

As luck would have it KG the guru that came to the project has a ring of LED's that wrap around his hard hat. He was a like a walking light bulb. A cool white bulb. So my little honeycomb lens on my head lamp was not needed when I was within 25 feet from the human lamp. I did have a round head 6P with me. One with a group buy M361w. 

So when my kid boss and the other helper heard scientists were coming to our project they "found" reasons to not be around. Well me being me I welcomed the chance to hang out with the one person who did come out to the job. He was one of those guys who can look left and explain why heat rises and a scientist understands the geek speak, turn and look at me and have me understanding as well. So I bombarded the guy with questions about the materials we use to build roads. Some about how things the folks he works with began using 15-20 years ago. Others about what they have on their roster for the future. 

He told me a story of how they invented pavement using ground up glass in it and how it glitters. He said "our current president" paid the city he used to live in to pave the road in front of his hotel with it as a way to attract high end guests who see the roadway from their balconey twinkle when cars drove past. Apparently there are asphalt roads in America with shingles from houses, glass, rubber from tires, slag from metal factories, coal, shredded newspaper, water bottles, and lots of other waste products we never consider where it goes when the recycle truck picks it up from our homes. 

The product I was watching was a new way of blending recycled asphalt into new asphalt and how it will hold up under lots of heavy trucks going over it. They picked a country road with a miniscule amount of structure that gets extreme loads over it in order to almost torture the new pavement to see how it holds up in the worst conditions. So I was observing pavement history in the making (again). See, I watched this same road get paved with a new idea about 15 years ago. A pavement they said they hoped would last 5 years (back then) that lasted 15 and really wasn't that bad when we got here. 

Between the walking light bulb, lighting on the equipment and my headlamp I really did not need a flashlight this night.






To the right is the walking light bulb.


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Sep 16, 2020)

Beautiful! Guys that know how to explain things to anyone no matter their education level are true masters of the craft. Even if you got no use of your lights, that sounded like a great night.

If you enjoyed your brilliant pal's explanations, you may like the Practical Engineering channel on YouTube. The host, Grady, is amazing at making complex topics easier to understand, including the recyclability of asphalt, the design of roads, and how potholes form and expand.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMOqf8ab-42UUQIdVoKwjlQ


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## chillinn (Sep 16, 2020)

bykfixer said:


> See, I watched this same road get paved with a new idea about 15 years ago. A pavement they said they hoped would last 5 years (back then) that lasted 15 and really wasn't that bad when we got here.



Been subscribed and lurking in this thread for some time. Very interesting. Happy customer. Some speculation and conjecture to follow. 

bykfixer, I know you're in Virginia, and this is key. I used to live in Western PA outside Pittsburgh, and travelled the PA Turnpike (first in the nation) from time to time. Roads up there are, or at least were, horrible (I think in the last 10 years the PA Turnpike has mostly been fixed). It is not necessarily the colder winters and more frozen precipitation, but rather the salt PennDOT throws down, that destroys the roads. I have seen some severe snow storms in Virginia (, and one that comes to mind is the Winter of 2001. Another is the Storm of the Century, during which I was in the mountains in Blacksburg with a 240 wagon. Another is a storm in Winter 2003, I was outside Blacksburg in McCoy, but commuting 15mi to Dublin at 4AM to sling packages for the UPS hub there... could not have made it without the pre-Chrystler 4WD Cherokee I was lucky to have. Snow so deep I only see the tops of the road signs. Commute that morning was like skippering a small boat on choppy water, up and down, up and down.). But generally, in the lower elevation flat eastern side of Virginia, and thanks to proximity to the Bay, it seems to snow half an inch here once or twice a Winter, and unless it snowed at night, that snow is gone within 6 hours. No reason to salt, so roads here benefit and last longer.

Here's the conjecture and skew to your post. Virginia has built some beautiful 4 lane highways and bridges (like in West Point) deep into the sticks where it doesn't seem the population warrants such a thing. They are not new (well, the West Point bridges are reasonably new). I believe the 4 lane highways into the sticks must have been made during an economy boom period, and have just lasted and lasted because the traffic is really low, and the Virginia winters are mild, so hardly any salt gets spread on them, if ever, no need. And salt may not be available in Virginia, because road authorities do not stock up.

I really upset some born here friends when I observed that when it snows during the day here, half an inch, you see pickup after pickup in ditches along these rural highways, even 4WD pickups. The implication they picked up, that I am not sure I consciously intended, is that Virginia drivers can't drive in even a dusting of snow. The schools all close here when there's a half inch of snow. Up north, kids are lucky to see a 1 hour delay if there's 6 feet of snow, and usually none. What I really meant is that Virginia does not have the winter infrastructure or winter road support that you'll see in the northern states, because generally, there is no need. 

But fwiw, I learned to drive in a standard transmission RWD vehicle in the snow. FWD and AWD and 4WD and automatic transmissions makes slick travel effortless for me. But of course... not on ice, just on slick roads. You can't drive on ice. I was once completely stopped, at a standstill, at a stop sign, and I saw the ice ahead and I was considering what to do, when _the wind_ pushed my Volvo 240 forward into the ice... brakes locked... madly turning the steering wheel back and forth (which sometimes works). I had time to put it in reverse, nothing, wheels spinning... slid 300 feet into a parked beautiful brand new dual cab pickup. I could not believe it happened. Not a good day. 

Anyway, everyone likes the wide tires, better summer traction, better cornering, tires stick to dry roads. But, though it seems counter intuitive, you need skinnier tires for snow, so there is more pressure in a smaller area to push the tires through the snow to the road underneath. Virginia drivers probably will sometimes not get all weather tires, and go for the cooler looking wider wheel base. No good in snow. Wide knobby tires are for sand, perhaps offroad, too. Cool as hell looking, but a bad choice. Vanity. Go all weather, and don't get the cheapest option. There is no substitute for good tires. They are everything.

tl;dr, Virginia roads last because of the milder winters, and you can drive on snow if you know how, but you can't drive on ice without proper studded tires (which, btw, damage and destroy the road).

P.S. I know you can rent and race 911's on ice somewhere, sounds like hella fun, but it would be impossible without the proper tires.


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## bykfixer (Sep 16, 2020)

Freeze thaw cycles play a big part in the PA road system. Lots of people I have run across over the years have said "it's the salts they use" but salt is salt everywhere. Some places in PA have 2 freeze thaw cycles in a 24 hour period for months at a time where other states have one or less. 

Actually one of the reasons the scientists picked the asphalt mix at the road I was watching was because it is in an area of the US that gets frequent freeze thaw cycles. VA is a test pit for the FEDS a lot a well and they really like using an area between Charlottsville and Richmond due to the number of freeze thaw cycles compared to other parts of the state. They throw $ at the VA Research Council and tell them "we are looking for X Y and Z characteristics in a pavement". The research council in turn reaches out to contractors, both large and small for input on how they can change the actual production and placement of the materials. 

Using up the mountains of recycled asphalt for example. Can it be used for roadway base since it is flexible, therefore resists the freeze thaw cycles better than gravels? Yet what "specialized" equipment has to be invented versus using what everybody already has? Specialized equipment means only the big rich contractor can compete for the business since they have the money to buy this special equipment. 

It's a very complicated situation, building roads. Federal input ensures everybody has a chance to compete. Or at least that is the intent. One year I worked with an up and coming contractor who did a lot of guinea pig work for the research council while some new ideas were being tried out. Another history in the making project where I had the pleasure of over seeing the quality control. 

I'll check out that channel Jean Luc. Tonight my assignment is going to be like watching grass grow so I should have some spare time. Being low guy on the totum pole I go where there is a space that needs filling. Tonight they need a striping monitor. I will monitor a couple of quality control checks at first and sign some documents before going home. Coffee is my friend during those situations. 

Tonight I'll carry my E2D with warm Tana and a throwey cool beam number made by SOG (DE-05).


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## chillinn (Sep 16, 2020)

I think the salt camp isn't suggesting salt, itself, does much of anything to roads, but that salt is hard and abrasive, and after it works and thaws the snow and ice, it hangs out on the road until pushed to the side. Until then, tires rolling over salt is (again, conjecture) pitting the road, little pits fill with water, water freezes and expands, opening the pits into little potholes, and enough cycles of that, bigger potholes. Salt just does the little pits, and water freezing does the rest. I have seen snow plows in VA, but never a salt truck. I'm sure there must be some, but in PA in winter after snow, they're pretty common. So are pot holes. Coincidence? Ok, ok... correlation is not causation.


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## bykfixer (Sep 16, 2020)

In VA the sand that sprays from snow plows has about 25% salt. And bridges get pure salt at times depending on temperature. Below a certain temp salt actually hardens the frozen liquids. 
I drove a plow for 15 years before becoming a consultant. 

Salt piles are stored in giant sheds and mixed in with the sand piles whenever snow is predicted. PA used to use slag and cinders for traction, which is way more abrasive than sand due to sand particles being polished over time. Slag and cinders are more flat faced. But with industries drying up in PA the slag and cinder waste may not be as available as it once was. But it's the rapid expansion and contraction during freeze cycles is what accelarates the degradation of pavement surfaces. Especially asphalts.


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## bigburly912 (Sep 16, 2020)

I didn’t know there were parts of Virginia without salt trucks. Our plows even run the sand/salt here


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## knucklegary (Sep 16, 2020)

Caltrans uses a salt brine water mixture. Supposedly easier on the environment but still harsh to your vehicles

What ever happened to using retired scrap tires ground and added to asphalt mixture.. scrapped the idea?


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## bykfixer (Sep 16, 2020)

I asked the walking light bulb that very question KG. 

A met an inspector from San Diego while working in North Carolina who said in Cali you guys use rubber tire rollers since the rock in the asphalt mixture is pulverized when using vibrating steel drums like we do. He said out your way the heated rubber in the oil stuck to the rubber tires real bad so Cali got away from it. Now it seems back then the rubber was not ground up all that fine like it is now. So you may see it resume in the future out west. 

Here in my state the walking light bulb said that the process of mixing rubber with liquid asphalt had to be done at high heat. And that kept resulting in catastrophic fires of asphalt plants. After a few major fires the industry said "screw that" and stopped using it. He said a new process of finely grinding the rubber into a powder, mixing it into the liquid asphalt prior to mixing it with the sand and gravel shows promise and that a few roads in the mountains here already have some pavements with it including a section of an east west truck route called I-81. He said a 3 mile strip done 5 years ago is holding up better than they had hoped using a blending system California has used for decades. It has a foaming liquid added that allows things to be blended at much lower temperatures. 

I think I'll start a thread in the off topic area to discuss roadways, recycling, snow removal etc. That way this one can focus on lighting tools in light pollution while the other thread can meander around the roadway topic like a winding country road. I'd also like to bring up a topic there about kinder gentler cleaning products being used to keep giant Tonka toys free of build up from grimes, dirt, concrete and petroleum such as tar. 
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/v...dway-maintenance-thread&p=5413536#post5413536

Right now I'm back on Main St USA where parking lot lights bombard the area with pinks, oranges, yellows and cool whites that cast a million shadows on the work taking place. Right now my blue and white shirt appears orange and dark something or other. Tint snobs would suffer PTSD in these conditions, and it's PWM purgetory. lol.





Ugh!! 





Double UGH!!


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## AstroTurf (Sep 16, 2020)

car lot?



bykfixer said:


> Right now I'm back on Main St USA where parking lot lights bombard the area with pinks, oranges, yellows and cool whites that cast a million shadows on the work taking place. Right now my blue and white shirt appears orange and dark something or other. Tint snobs would suffer PTSD in these conditions, and it's PWM purgetory. lol.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## bykfixer (Sep 16, 2020)

To the right is a car lot. To the right is a furniture store chain. In the distance a gas station convenience store.

Will the stripes and arrows reflect well? This is where tint and all that isn't really all that important. It's what will it look like to halogen headlights. So I whipped out a light and used it at about the angle of an autombile headlights. I was looking for dark places in the reflective beads. Usually this contractor does a good job, but my job is to check. 





The native light at a given location. 





What a car sees. 
Streaks in the photo are showing how humid the air is a few hours before the arrival of what remains of hurricane Sally. Water droplets being tossed around by a light breeze.


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## bykfixer (Sep 21, 2020)

Tonights assignment is watching reflector installation. The dept of transportation is trying out a new reflector to go between stripes on a new pavement. No brighter than before but instead of metal housing they are polyester. They stay in place pretty good, but on the occasion one does break free and become air born, instead of being a flying brick the new polyester ones would be like a flying empty soda can. Scare the crap out of you still but not climb into your automobile. 

Brb, phone ringing. It was the boss. 

So a stripe has been placed and every other skip line gets a reflector between it. 





Skip line before reflector placed. 

The a truck with a specialized set of grinders grinds a 4 foot long cut, then a 6" long by 1" deep groove then another 4 foot long groove is cut. The 4 foot long grooves start out at pavement grade and slope down to the deep part, then back up. That allows the reflector to set below the pavement so that snow plows slide over it. The tapered depths allow your headlights to hit the reflector. 





The grinder truck

Then a worker places a bit of expoxy into the 1" hole, then squashes a reflector down into the epoxy glue. 





The worker pushes down on the reflector with his boot. 

After that they move to the next one. The process takes about one minute total. Yet each lane gets hundreds before the shift is over. This lane got 344.





The tiny dot was lit by my throwey flashlight for this photo. 

The reflectors don't make as much impact on a new dark black pavement with shiney new stripes. But in a few years when the pavement has faded to a light gray and the stripes are dull the reflectors are like lights on an airstrip at night, worth their weight in gold. Especially in the rain. 

My flashlight comes in handy for checking the depth of the groove, to ensure the epoxy is placed on a dust free surface and to double check that the reflector was placed in the correct direction since the back side has a red reflector to alert motorists driving on the wrong side of the road that they are……


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## bykfixer (Sep 25, 2020)

Tonights operation is in a location with no light pollution, not even stars due to cloud cover from storm Beta. Even an incan Solitaire could provide enough light to walk by. It's been a while since I've been in this much darkness. My 500 lumen thrower looks a lot brighter tonight. Ideal conditions for a Maglite ML25 since there aren't any free lumens sucking up the sub 200 lumen output. My ML25 looks as bright as the 550 lumen SOG DE-05, minus all of the spill from those extra lumens.





The trees are about a football field away. 177 lumen ML25


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## greenpondmike (Sep 25, 2020)

As bright as that hotspot is it might even throw 2 football fields.


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## bykfixer (Sep 25, 2020)

The air was humid GreenPond as the remainder of tropical system Beta was over the area so any light that could shine 2 football fields caused the moisture droplet saturated air to illuminate, which resulted in things looking fuzzy at 100 feet. Using the 550 lumen thrower was self blinding in the wet air so I figured less lumens with a narrower beam would do the trick. Worked like a charm. 
One reason I chose a gen 1 ML25 over a gen 2 is the narrower hot spot from the gen 1 version. The upgraded ML25 has a broader hot spot and would probably be great in dry air. (I carry both versions and a 170 something lumen 2D LED super thrower in my truck)

It was like trying to shine a flashlight through smoke. I also noticed holding the light over my head or at my waste seemed to work better than holding it beside my head as well. Much like fog lights I suppose. 

Now one cool experiment I would like to try it a side by side with the ML25 LED and an incan version I have that is running off 6 volts and uses a 5 cell bulb as it appears at least as bright as the LED ML25. Would the warmer beam allow me to see better through the all of that moisture? If I get advance notice of returning to that same area I will carry the incan one too.


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Sep 25, 2020)

I think it will, byk. I live near the south american Pantanal area, which to our desperation is burning worse than the US West Coast, and out of the lights I'm EDCing, my warmest ones cut through the smoke and haze like it's only half of what it actually is (dense enough that a regular cloudless day can reach overcast levels of gloominess). Your humidity should provide the same effect, maybe even less because a warm white LED is still far from incan in the spectrum distribution.

Hopefully it's still humid (and not smoky, god no) when you're scheduled to go there again!


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## bykfixer (Sep 25, 2020)

I'm on the east coast of the US Jean-Luc and the day before our sky was hazy from smoke west coast fires and the air slightly smelled of burning forest.
Hopefully your situation will improve soon. 




The clouds are smoke from over 2600 miles away. 

I may walk to the edge of my neighborhood to try a side by side tonight if the air is still thick with moisture. We have a ton of light pollution so it would be apples and oranges compared to a side by side in total darkness.

I surmize a warm beam does not penetrate any better, just that our eyes find that tint easier to look at so in smokey/humid situations our brain reacts more favorable than the "holy crap turn down that light" reaction of cooler tints.


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## greenpondmike (Sep 26, 2020)

I volunteered to work night shift tonight to finish paying for a another truck I'm buying. Now I can play with my new red 2c ML25IT I just got in the mail. Bykfixer, is the west coast on fire again? Stupid question, but I don't listen to the news.


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## bykfixer (Sep 26, 2020)

What are your plans for the IT? 

The 10 second weather sound bite on the radio said "hazy skies tomorrow due to smoke from the west coast fires", so yeah I suppose it is. I don't watch news either. Listening to the coast to coast show recently, they had a fellow explaining why wildfires out west get so out of hand so quickly now. Decisions by politicians and environmental groups (he says) led to too much fuel laying around. 

In the movie "only the brave" the chief had his recruits looking out over a mountain range and says (paraphrasing here) "what do you see?" Replies were like "pristine wilderness"……he said "fuel, you see fuel" lol. 

It's like one project I did recently where million dollar homes are built within a quarter mile of a rock quarry that was there 50 years before the homes were built. Residents there want the rock quarry to stop blasting rock as it shakes their match stick built homes. I watched the road nearby get repaved about 15 years ago when the subdivision was first starting. When I returned recently there were hundreds of homes, apartment buildings and businesses that butt right up against the rock quarry. 
That is apparently what has been taking place out west. Homes built in places that are a bad idea. The old American Indian saying "pale face build teepee where red man won't even hunt" gets more true everyday it seems. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy that ML25 IT on _your _​night shift green pond.


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## aznsx (Sep 26, 2020)

bykfixer said:


> I surmize a warm beam does not penetrate any better, just that our eyes find that tint easier to look at so in smokey/humid situations our brain reacts more favorable than the "holy crap turn down that light" reaction of cooler tints.



Around here, the smoke certainly causes a lot of aerial haze aloft (and thus hazy daytime lighting conditions in general), but no real PM2.5 type particulates showing up near the surface. Might be different there, but I imagine most of your flashlight scatter is probably that moisture-laden 'so thick you could cut it with a knife' stuff that I recall so well from my RVA days.

I imagine after your due diligence testing, you'll come back and say that you've concluded that 'intensity of the scattered light is inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength' - to which I'll say: Huh?.

Anyway, on those nights I'm pretty sure you'll be better served by some of your warmer-spectrum devices than your cooler ones over any significant distance - perhaps like that incandescent you had out recently, but not likely by your cooler LEDs.


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## greenpondmike (Sep 26, 2020)

I agree with you bykfixer. One time Johnny Cash had to pull over due to bad wheel bearings that caused his wheel to catch on fire. It caught the grass on fire and burnt a good bit of land out there. He was fined for destroying the habitat of some sort of bird. I think this was in the 70s, so that fuel has been a long time coming.
I also listen to coast to coast-- good program.
I plan on playing with that ml25it in stock form for a little while and maybe do to it what you did to yours. The flood beam has a bunch of rings in it, but that light has a quality feel and I do like it. I also ordered 2 fenix E01 V2.0's. One for me and one for my brother in law.


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## greenpondmike (Sep 27, 2020)

I've heard something like you were talking about bykfixer, about people building on land that the Indian thought was cursed or even putting a national park there--and people wonder why others go missing in national parks.
I read that one time someone put up an apartment complex next to a junkyard and the city made the owner of the junkyard put up a 2 story fence at his expence so the people in the apartments wouldn't have to see his junk cars.


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## bykfixer (Sep 27, 2020)

Wavelength to the 4th power? That makes my brain hurt. The scatter was all about the million drops of water every square foot. You don't see it in the day but with the honeycomb lens activated on my head lamp they show up and it's kinda eery. Almost a visual sense of being under water. 

My wife's best friend moved to AZ for the dry air. She ended up moving back after 5 years saying her allergies got much worse. 

One experiment I want to try is to color the lens of a cool white thrower with a pumpkin orange sharpie and compare it to a light bulb thrower to see if it's just the color of the beam or something about the old electric fire on a stick (light bulbs).

Junkyards are called "auto recycling facility's" around my area these days GPM. Cars no longer sit for month after month but go to the crusher after 90 days. Perhaps that lessens environmental restrictions?


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## greenpondmike (Sep 27, 2020)

Could be bykfixer. The epa has been hard on junk yards.


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## PhotonWrangler (Sep 27, 2020)

bykfixer said:


> One experiment I want to try is to color the lens of a cool white thrower with a pumpkin orange sharpie and compare it to a light bulb thrower to see if it's just the color of the beam or something about the old electric fire on a stick (light bulbs).



If you know anybody in theater, see if you can get your hands on a Roscolux color swatchbook. It has a huge variety of color filters, and some of them actually have the color bandpass graph included for each filter.


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## bykfixer (Sep 27, 2020)

A side by side ML25 over a field with a mist rising. 
An overcast night so no moon showing but a dry air mass made the air droplet free. I did however find a place where a fog was rising over a soybean field. 






Left is ML25IT (with 2x 18500 LifePo4 and 4 cell Mag bipin)
Right is ML25IT (gen 1 using eneloops for fuel)

The beam hits the field about 200 feet away with the lights held by my head. I cropped out the first 150 feet or so. The cool beam appears brighter but I could see detail better at a distance through the warm beam.


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## aznsx (Sep 27, 2020)

bykfixer said:


> The cool beam appears brighter but I could see detail better at a distance through the warm beam.



Thanx for taking the math out of this Mr. Bykfixer - it made my head hurt too! Generally, I only do math when I'm being paid to - and I never enjoy it.

Yes, in such conditions, longer wavelengths are our friend, and this is a right good demo. Aerial 'scatter' looks bright, but does nothing net positive for our vision in general. Besides being a 'night shift' guy, I'm often out exploring in the real world shooting landscapes/wildlife in the late afternoon (for pleasure), and in recent times I've decided that my backup light should always be of a warmer spectrum - and this is one of a couple of reasons for that. When out exploring I usually head home by last light and leave the place to the IPs, but when out past dark those two switch roles in times when humidity/dew point can shoot up after dark (sometimes in Winter or monsoon season, near water, etc.).


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## bykfixer (Sep 28, 2020)

Tonight I watched a truck putting down molten plastic to be yellow lines on new pavement. 





See the steam at the rear of the truck? 
Regretfully no non blurry pix could be had as my shutter was slower than the in motion truck. 

Only flashlight needed tonight was my Streamlight double clutch hard hat light on low honeycomb lens mode to check mil thickness of the hardened plastic on a test plate and sign documents. 

This was the road with the test pilot asphalt I watched the night the walking light bulb was on the project.


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## bykfixer (Sep 29, 2020)

Tonight I was prepared for a Maglite battle royal. However the contractor forgot to notify the folks that handle communications between companies that send over size loads from point a to b. So in other words while the contractor was out in the main road that goes from Buffalo to Miami or something there could be a ginormous something or other that left Philly 3 days ago for Atlanta and gets stuck behind us……uh, not good. 

My celphone rings and if it's officer so n so with the State Police who informs me my contractor is not authorized to work on that road tonight and it's up to me to make sure he doesn't have to arrest anybody. Gulp!! Nuff said. 

My lineup was to be the ML25 Gen 1 vs Gen 2 LED version, versus a 3 cell incan with 2x 18650's using a Streamlight TL3 bulb, versus a 2 cell with 2x 18500's and a 4 cell xenon bipin, versus Gen 1 LED with a pumpkin orange lens, versus Maglite 2D classic LED mega thrower versus a Maglite 3D with a Malkoff drop in. And for kicks and giggles a 1974 2C Kel-Lite using 18500 fuel and a 4 cell PR base bulb versus a Maglite 2C classic using 18500 fuel and a 4 cell bipin bulb. 

For pure throw my money rides on the 2D classic mega thrower to win, classic 2C for runner up and the 1974 Kel Lite to place.


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Sep 29, 2020)

Poor communication kills. Or at least sets work back significantly.


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## bykfixer (Oct 1, 2020)

A completed strip of roadway in a land time forgot. 

Speaking to a local fellow who pulled into where I was sitting as an observer, truckers really like the little candles between skip lines, especially the red ones as that keeps them referrenced after driving miles after mile. As in they know that aint the side of the road they want to be on.

Most of my time was sitting in a truck with flashing lights at hill crests. See, there were numerous blind spots due to vertical changes and often the truck out front grinding the grooves into the pavement would be a couple hundred feet out front of the truck placing the reflectors and crash cushion truck behind that one. So when truck one was on one side of a blind spot and the others behind him were visible, I sat on the crest of the hill that was causing the blind spot with my lights on to ensure motorists passing the crash cushion truck stayed in the same lane as they passed over the hill in order to prevent said motorist from crashing into the back of a big ole asphalt eating Tonka toy.


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## Monocrom (Oct 1, 2020)

I guess I could put this in the "Coronavirus II" topic. But since it seems some folks latch onto any post in there to try to start an argument, I'll post this here. (I'm at the point where I'm almost exclusively posting updates in that topic instead of responding to others.)

So, my night shift job is at a huge building with cameras everywhere. The outdoor ones are extremely well concealed. Management has made it clear that they don't want the HUGE parking lots turning into a hang out for the Homeless. So much so that they've given all the security officers permission to kick them out. If they refuse to leave, call the police. Let them deal with it, mention the call in your daily shift report. And, management will 100% back you up. 

Sounds great.... on paper. So, lately I started noticing a certain vehicle that would enter the lot just after 10:30pm, and leave before my shift ended, around 7am. This went on for a handful of days. The vehicle definitely looked out of place among the mainly current model Chevy SUVs and Malibu sedans. And out of place among the current model Toyota Prius, and RAV4s. (Fleet vehicles.) And out of place among the higher-end cars that were personal transportation vehicles. 

Walking by one night, I noticed a guy sleeping inside. He wasn't doing much of a job of trying to cover up either. Unfortunately, the client keeps a couple of the gates open 24/7 for monetary reasons I won't get into. Though nothing illegal. Just makes our job harder. Well, on this night, it wasn't just the guy sleeping in his car.

Mild rain. While doing my rounds, I spotted someone asleep in an alcove that kept the rain off of them. Lying down with a white towel covering up most of their body. That's how I knew it was a homeless person instead of someone who might have fallen, hit their head, and needed help. This was also after hours on a weekend night. Made my way back to the desk to get my pepper spray. Been at the client's site for just over 5 years and this was the first such thing that ever took place there while I worked the night shift. Went back outside, stood a few away with my pepper spray concealed in one hand. I had put a 20 dollar bill in the other.

Woke the guy up. Thankfully he wasn't violent. Just obviously a bit drunk, and chose to walk all the way to this alcove at the far end of the lot from both of the open gates. He was genuinely shocked to hear about the presence of video cameras all over the property. I respectfully told him it would be best to leave. He began complying immediately. Though slowly. I handed him the $20 after he at first refused, and told me it was okay. I politely insisted until he took it. Letting him know not to ever return here again. Otherwise next time, I'd have to call the police. 

Thing is, the police in the area come in all the time to use the restrooms or sit and eat in the public seating areas during their meal breaks. They know us, we know them. They're very friendly with building security. _But_ they don't play around. Most places, the Homeless have no problem with the police being called on them. They arrive, refusal to leave, get arrested for trespassing. Minor charge. End up in jail for a few hours. To them, now they have shelter and can look forward to a free meal. Maybe some free medical attention if they're really hurting. As for the criminal charge? What have they got to lose? Not as though they have a job they'll be fired from if their boss learns they've been locked up. Judges typically find them guilty, sentence them to Time Served, and release them back onto the streets.

Things are different in this neighborhood. The police are aware of what the Homeless sometimes do for shelter and a free meal. And they really hate having their time wasted like that. They don't ever take things too far. But let's just say the local Homeless population here knows not to try to get arrested for shelter and a free meal because that's not what they're going to end up getting. I waited by the alcove as the homeless guy slowly walked away in the general direction of the main gate. No need to follow him. If he went anywhere else in the lot, I'd see him on the security cameras at the main desk later.

So now, went to deal with the other individual. The one in the car that stood out from all the other ones. The one parked in an isolated spot. SureFire Tactician in one hand, pepper spray in the other. Used the same respectful approach. Thankfully the guy responded in kind. Told me how he was a Veteran, how he was out of work due to the pandemic, how he recently got kicked out of his apartment because he had no money coming in. And, he was now living out of his car. Told me about a good friend of his, also a veteran. Same thing happened to him. But he killed himself over it. Not sure if he was lying about that last part. Hopefully he was. Gave him my condolences. Respectfully told him he had to leave.

He told me that he never bothered anyone, never caused any trouble, always left early in the morning. I agreed with him, he was right. Trouble is, cameras all over the place. And I've worked there long enough to know that the manager always gets around to checking them. Had I let the guy keep using the lot like that, the client's manager would have found out about it soon enough. And when he gets mad, someone usually gets fired. So, my job was being put at risk. I spoke to him man-to-man. Mutual respect. He understood. And that was it. It's only been a couple of nights. Thankfully neither individual has returned, and I hope it stays that way.


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## bykfixer (Oct 1, 2020)

At one point in my life I slept in the bed of my pickup a couple of nights. 
Later I had a nice apartment but I never appreciated it fully until one night while working a night shift on a night you leave for work with a jacket and carry another knowing you'll need that too. Around midnight I was on a coffee run and saw a person about my age under the eve of a porch at a bank folding out his cardboard box shelter and unfolding his newspaper blankets. When I arrived back at my apartment I opened kitchen cabinet doors marveling all the food, then my fridge doing same, I turned on the faucet and ran warm water while giggling like a 3rd grader who got away with looking up teachers skirt. Then I laid on my carpet and started doing snow angels……

Tonight I got the chance to photograph the Maglite ML25 gen 1 and gen 2 in a way that shows where those extra 20 lumens went. Throw. 





The Gen 1 reaching out about the length of a football field shows trees and such ok





The Gen 2 reaching out same length even better.


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## Monocrom (Oct 2, 2020)

I wish I could have done something. I hope the first guy took the $20 and used it for food. Or at least, _some_ of it for food. I hope the other guy found a new spot he could sleep at, at least until he finds work again. Obviously it's far from reasonably priced to live in NYC. And unfortunately, the number of New Yorkers now living out of their vehicles is much higher than ever.


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## greenpondmike (Oct 6, 2020)

Seems like the homeless are increasing in number in the big cities. I'm concerned they might freeze to death out on the streets of those northern cities. Most probably feel like no one cares. Monocrom, sounds like you do.
Bykfixer, I like those beam shots. Please keep going. This is a good thread to share your experiences as a consultant in construction and to share your fun with flashlights. Man, that newer 2c ML25LT sure blows the older one away!


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## bykfixer (Oct 6, 2020)

Soooooo many channels to choose from regarding why the larger homeless issue that continues to grow. At one point in my life the vast majority were bums. Just flat out bums. But things have gotten so dang complicated now a days that millions of ordinary people are a paycheck away from being homeless. 

I remember a day setting at a table in a big city eating a slice of pizza and across the street were two ordinary looking dudes wearing trench coats. Nothing special. Suddenly a policeman pulls up and starts talking to them. It seems as though they had walked into a convenience store and stuffed multiple cases of beer in their trench coats and walked out. A postal worker had seen it and reported it to the store clerk. Apparently the store clerk scoffed and said "they just want to get arrested so they have a warm bed tonight". The postal worker got mad and called the police on these two bums and the store clerk. The policeman apparently explained to the frustrated postal worker how these fellows do this often in fall and winter trying to get arrested so they can be fed and have a place to sleep. So the policeman approaches the two fellows who give up the stolen beer without incident. 

I was with 2 fellows who had found spots in that city to ride their bmx bikes to perform stunts and I was the camera man. The 2 bike riders had never seen such a thing as that and walked across the street and handed to two bums some pizza. I said "don't do it, don't feed the bums"…… well for the rest of that day everywhere we went bums kept pestering them for money. And off in the distance were those two guys in trench coats. Eventually we were robbed at gun point for their bikes and the camera I was using. Off in the distance were those two fellows with trench coats. So on the drive home one of the bike riders said to the other "that's the last time I feed a homeless guy"……

I had worked in big cities before and had seen all kinds of tricks pulled on nice, trusting people. But I had also had the distinct pleasure of helping a man who just needed a boost. Divine intervention if you will. This one guy kept popping up where I was. A gas station, a Taco Bell, what have you. Obviously homeless but he never asked me for anything except a few minutes to talk. Just talk. One day I saw the guy pandering. I had been shopping one Saturday near Christmas and had saved $50 to drop in a Salvation Army bucket. But there were none in that town. None. 

I see the guy at a red light and pulled down my ballcap so he could not see it was me. I handed him the $50 with my head turned like a driveby drug deal and went on my way. The next week I saw the guy at the construction site where I work scraping up concrete blobs on a new concrete pavement lane about to be opened to traffic. Thousands of small dollops of concrete had fallen off loads of concrete moving from point a to b. And here was this man crawling around on his hands and knees scraping them with a paint scraper. A few days later he goes whizzing by me driving one of those concrete trucks grinning from ear to ear. He told someone there that some stranger had given him $50 one day that he used to buy some work boots. The person telling me that said "that was pretty cool that a stranger did that". I replied "yeah that was cool, huh?" A few days later I was moved to another assignment in another town. 

Being a consultant I thank my guardian angel each time a client says "hey we need a cleanup guy over here at aisle 24"…… because that's usually what I do. Cleanup. Kinda fun at times. Kinda frustrating at times. If personalities don't clash we usually have a successful cleanup, the customer and I together. 

So the night shift assignment (this time) is coming to a close. I dread adapting to working nights yet you see the world from such a drastically different view. Kinda like being on the dark side of the moon I suppose. Being a flashlight nut allows me to enjoy my hobby in ways regular folks don't even know exists. I used to go to stores and buy flashlights to give away when I was the only dummy with one. But I learned over time that most will use it until the batteries die or leak and never fix it or replace the batteries. Often times they are like those two guys with trench coats I mentioned. So I just quietly go about my way waiting for a time when a flashlight will matter to someone, and give away one I keep in my truck for such a time. Right now I have 3 new in package lights intended as give aways. Same with a $20 bill I keep stashed in my wallet so when the right circumstance presents itself I can lend a boost to someone who needs it.


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## greenpondmike (Oct 6, 2020)

That's cool bykfixer. I sometimes give away a flashlight to someone hoping they will find it much more useful than the puny floodlight on their cell phone.


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## greenpondmike (Oct 7, 2020)

I miss working night shift especially at the old #3 abandoned mine in Adger. Several of the teenagers that rhode their razers and 4 wheelers out there knew the importance of having a flashlight. A lot still used that cell phone light. They had their razers all decked out with lights to the point I had to cover my eyes when they were coming towards me. Out there an incan mini mag was bright. I used to shine my ML50 and my 6d mag incan on a pile of dirt off in a distance and the 6d would make it look red (like the true color it was) and make it stand out real good. The ML50 would light it up, but it made the dirt pile look gray and it didn't stand out as well. Now I work dayshift and if I try to show anyone how bright a light is it doesn't look bright at all. They just have to take my word for it or think I'm nuts. I don't recommend saying anything good about a light under a thousand lumens in the daytime.


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## bykfixer (Oct 7, 2020)

One thing I have learned over the years of working at night in country side locations while surrounded by lit construction equipment is variety is a good thing. 
My hard hat lamp is an optional flooder or thrower. At 100 or so cool white lumens through the floody honeycomb lens it always lights my path for a pace or two when in a shadow or away from lights. I call it spill prevention light. As in it keeps me from spilling in a ditch or a rut beside the road. A quick twist of the lens will provide a nice spot and if more light is needed a quick double twist puts it from around 65% to 100% output. The Streamlight double clutch using Petzel helmet clips has been very useful a few years now. 

Knowing my next destination and duty comes in handy. Is it Metropolitan well lit, a place so dark a BiC lighter makes you squint or something in between. Settings are probably the most useful thing. 1000 lumens in total darkness is too much. 100 in heavy light pollution is not enough. It goes against everything a tint fan, flashaholic would enjoy but a good ole baby blue beam zoomy is probably the most useful light I use on construction sites at night. Flood or pencil beam capable, the blumens contrast nearly all light pollution. I just hold my nose and aim away. Sometimes even strobe comes in handy. A strobing zoomy set to pencil beam is like a laser pointer. Want someone to see an overhead object, or other reason attention needs to turn to something the flashing pencil beam aimed at said object does the trick. Especially in loud conditions when the words "look out" can't be heard. 

In daytime a pencil beam is useful at competing against sunshine or lighting something dark. For a shadow the max lumen light is required for sure. But for lighting inside a pipe or manhole in bright sunlight a pencil beam, even from a light like the Maglite ML25 does the trick. Yet a wrist strap is a good idea. Believe me, there have been places I used the Elzetta Bones or ML25 to light up that if I dropped it I would probably just leave it there. Dangerous crevices, sewer manholes etc. 

One day I was working near a big ole pipe my boss wanted to peer into. Now this guy had asked a few times "anybody got a shovel? An empty water bottle? A flashlight?" Folks around would shrug their shoulders. I'd say "flat or round? (shovel) Large or small? (empty plastic bottle) Flood or thrower?" So this day he peered into the pipe and could not see anything. By the time he had knelt down to the pipe and found out he could not see I had walked to my truck and retrieved my Elzetta Bones. He looked in my direction and I underhand tossed him the flashlight. It was loud where we were, but I read his lips say "my man" lol. One day his assistant called me MeGeyver. That was a compliment too. He said "MeGeyver, got any duct tape?" I said "I have Bat tape" went to my truck and pulled out a roll of duct tape covered with Batman logos. lol. 

The last few nights I have been around the machine that grinds asphalt. Between all the dust from that thing and ragweed pollen I feel pretty lousy. But tonight I'm going back to a place where stripes will be placed. Plus it's going to be dark there and not all lit up by light pollution and deisel powered sunshine fumes. As a bonus, a lot quieter. 

Tonight I will carry one I don't use a lot but enjoy. The modern day version of the Rayovac Sportsman from 2015. A 200 lumen 3x aaa throwey number with a rubber grip and a glow in the dark safety ring at the end that doubles as a small traffic wand. It's kinda like an indestructable. It can also run off an 18500 but I choose to use aaa batteries in it.


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## greenpondmike (Oct 7, 2020)

You had me on the edge of my seat for a moment, bykfixer. I thought you was going to say that someone dropped one of your lights in a hole.  I recon I was wrong about those bluish lights. Seems like they're very useful.
In the past I thought I could find a light that could meet all needs, but it pays to have a different light for different circumstances.


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## Monocrom (Oct 8, 2020)

Just a quick update: Neither homeless man has returned to the client's site. I hope they are both doing better.


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## bykfixer (Oct 8, 2020)

Prayers go out to those folks. It's getting pretty cool at night in my state and I'm well south of NY. Brrrr. 

Last night I was reassigned to an area with mixed lighting and darkness. It was a night for a flooder at times to walk by and a spotter at times to ID blemishes in a pavement in shadows from well lit equipment. The Rayovac sportsman did the trick if the shadow was 75 feet or less. The helmet mounted light was used the most in low/flooder mode but a warm spectrum aaa minimag got the call a lot too. I really like that light. One guy thought it was a light bulb casting the beam. "That's pretty bright for a light bulb" he said. I did not correct him. 

To me that one is like a 3D Maglite with fresh batteries that fits nicely in a shirt pocket. The crew I mentioned a few posts ago that had zero flashlights back then were all carrying flashlights last night. It's funny how you can 'rub off' on people without trying. See, at times I would walk up and provide light when they needed. Other times I'd stand at a distance and watch them struggle with a celphone for light. Now none of them realize with a jacket on I have about 5 flashlights on my person. 

Tonight it has been confirmed I'll go back to the same place and watch a continuation of the same operation. I came to realize my E2D with a 350 lumen warm Tana does not provide enough light in that operation, yet my 63? lumen warm minimag does……Weird. It's all about the candella I suppose. The Maglite ML25 does a better job than my ML125 and XL 200. Fed by eneloops that is one amazing flashlight for mixed lighting conditions. And the gen 2 having a low means you can throttle it back some in low light so it doesn't blast out too many photons. So the Sportsman will go with me again along with the warm minimag a special guest, the hotwired 1973 2C Kel-Lite. I want to compare that one to the ML25 since it has quite the throwy spot light.


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## Devildude (Oct 8, 2020)

Monocrom said:


> Just a quick update: Neither homeless man has returned to the client's site. I hope they are both doing better.



Compassion is a rare trait these days. Many times I have tried to lend a hand up to someone who needs it. Sometimes it is rewarding, sometimes not so much. I always keep an eye out for those who need it.

A lot of tow behind campers parked along back roads in upstate. New trend this year. Working third shift for the last 11 years I have aquired a few lights ( ok more than a few ). It has been a fun hobby.


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## bykfixer (Oct 9, 2020)

I see lots of compassion these days DD, but…… when I see a person who looks like they just got out of the shower, wearing clean cloths holding a cardboard sign saying "have cancer" or "homeless mom" or other phrase to draw sympothy littered at every red light it kinda makes me say "wow, this is getting ridiculous". Is the homeless problem real? Sure it is. Yet when you hand a $10 bill to a homeless person and they say "is that all?" sympathy goes out the window. I carry a cooler with food in it at work and typically offer that to the panderers. 

When I worked in Greensboro NC they were required to have a pandering permit. At red lights you'd see people with a little ID card on a neck lanyard showing they had paid their quarterly pandering fee. No kidding. They even tax homeless folks in that city but, one day I saw a guy get dropped off from a big van and when he got out he put on a velcro arm cast and dark shades, walks over to an intersection and holds up a "blind, please help" sign. No kidding. In Durham NC there were homes in places that housed homeless people in exchange for a 'cut' of their daily take. 

So while working at night at a place where there was a mixture of dark and not dark my Rayovac was used again. I like that light more as I use it. The crew that at one point did not have flashlights all have 3 cell Maglite ML25 flashlights now. I asked why such a large flashlight. The response was "we keep losing smaller lights". So I finally learned how come a crew of people who work at night for a living did not have flashlights. They kept losing their 2x aa flashlights. I saw the foreman's flashlight at a distance and saw it looked like a Maglite, but which one? So I asked. He says "oh this old piece a junk aint very bright". I discovered he is the only person I have ever met who did not know the Maglite beam can be adjusted. As you might know the ML25 operates like a minimag. So he would twist the head until light came out. Now the thing I like about gen 2 ML25's (or at least the ones I own) is that when light begins to come out it is at near optimum throw. The 3 cell version begins with a floody beam with a giant hole in the middle. I showed him how to dial his light to best beam and use the tailcap for on/off. Later I saw him showing one of the workers his new discovery. I showed him my gen 2 ML25 and he was blown away at the difference. Now what he probably does not know is his 3 cell light on old batteries is dimmer than with new as the 3 cell version dims to about 50% over time. My 2 cell has freshly charged eneloops and rock solid regulation. 

Now the guy I work for is all buddy-buddy with this crew where they laugh and joke all night. I tend to stay at a distance and only communicate with the boss (unless safety is involved then I speak to whomever is closest to solve said safety issue). I learned a long time ago that being that way keeps the contractor on their toes wondering what it is I'm jotting down in my pocket sized notebook. So that was why I did not know the reason nobody carried a flashlight was because they kept losing them. The foreman and I met way back in the 1980's when he ran the steam roller and I was an inspector who was often asked "are you even old enough to drive yet?" We had not seen each other in 20 some odd years and tonight may be the last time I see him for another decade or so. I have a hardly used 2 cell ML25 (2nd gen) I'm going to give him tonight. It had PowerEx rechargeables and a glass lens but I put in a stock one and some Rayovacs because it is likely the glass lens would get broken and that he does not have a charger for the batteries. My hope is when they have the chance his crew will stop in a Wal Mart and scoop up some 2 cell ML25's while they still have some.


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## bykfixer (Oct 10, 2020)

Last night I was Mr Fixer. Flashlight fixer. 

So I present this gen 2 ML25 to the paving foreman (with tailcap loosened slightly. ) and he instictively twisted the tailcap tight to turn it on. Yesssssssssss!!! He thanked me at least 10 times. Then he hands me his old Coast PX25 and says "can you make this work again?" Upon opening it up I could see leak goo galore. He had attempted to clean it but it didn't fire. "I dunno" I said. He said "take it, you can have it". Another guy walks up with a Nebo Slydez (the Slide that with focus able beam) and says "this keeps shutting off". It still had factory batteries so I inserted some Rayovacs I carry and viola, good as new. I explained it is apparently regulated so once your batteries get low it shuts off. Here comes a 3D cell Defiant next. "This thing keeps turning off". I did a spring stretch and a whack-a-palm and it began working correctly but then stopped again. A slight untwist of the head got it working until it was turned off. Turn it back on and same thing. A palm whack got it going. I said "go buy a Maglite". Here comes a dim Coast HP7. 4 new Rayovacs and that was like new. Yup, I was the flashlight battery Santa Clause last night. 

I have contacted Coast about a new battery cage for the PX25 but first it'll get a bath in Tarn-X…… Nope, no go still.


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Oct 10, 2020)

At least they have lights now, they're starting to learn.


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## Devildude (Oct 11, 2020)

It is far better to have and not need than to need and not have. I have way too many lights but I still look for new ones to fill some holes in the arsenal.


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## bykfixer (Oct 14, 2020)

It was fitting as we parted ways.
Back to getting copeous amounts of vitamin D for a while then maybe some bridge re-coating inspection at night in a few weeks. That would require floody flashlights due to up close work.


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## Grijon (Oct 14, 2020)

I hold a DOT Level 2 Concrete Inspector certification, but I have never had any desire to use it instead of my CDL; your posts are the first I’ve been even remotely tempted.

...but, nope, even as I write it (sitting in my driver’s seat) I realize not even getting to use my lights for real is enough to get me out of the truck.


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## bykfixer (Nov 1, 2020)

The only thing I like about testing concrete Grijon is those rare times I get to be the one pumping the handle of a concrete strength cylinder breaker up and down. Regular concrete is usually a let down as it kinda breaks like smashing a Rolaid tablet. But the high strength kind suddenly goes "POW" when you least expect it. 

On one night project a decade ago I broke cylinders to determine if the concrete was hard enough to put traffic on it. The stuff was called 5 hour concrete and would generate about 2000-2500 psi in 5 hours at 70 degrees farenheight. Sometimes I'd place one or two in a heat source to super cook them. The floor of my pickup with the heater running could cause them to harden to 10,000 psi in a few hours. I had a special sleeve to wrap around the sample, otherwise you could be injured by the shrapnel. 

Back then my aa incan minimag with fresh batteries was all I carried. If you needed more light one of those million candle power numbers plugged into a cigarette lighter port was the alternative. One coworker had his laying on the floor of his pickup lens down and accidently hit the on switch. One guy said "dude, why is the cab of your truck smoking?" The rubber floor mat had nearly caught fire.


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Nov 1, 2020)

That story takes me back to the tail end of my university years, byk. High-grade concrete is always a trip to yield test - after all, you're applying over 50 MPa of pressure on a small cylinder, and when it fails to hold all that power has to go _somewhere._ The rule of the lab where I did my internship was simple: if you're not wearing thick clothes and gloves and goggles, stay out of the press room!

Was the car lighter port torch one of those spotlights with a pistol grip? I remember badgering my parents to go to a hardware store to buy one of those with the allowance I'd saved up, way back when I was like 10-12 years old. It was hilariously bright and the way it heated up wowed me, but the seconds-long runtime on the internal battery was a huge disappointment. Eventually after mamy years of staying stored away in a shelf without use, I gave it away to my family's old mechanic.


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## bykfixer (Nov 1, 2020)

That's the one Jean-Luc. The ones we had would get the 12 volt outlet area smoking hot after a few minutes too. But man they were bright. 

Every time I type Jean-Luc my mind is hearing the voice of Q from an episide of the Next Generation where Picard's artificial heart gave out when he was electrocuted or something.

The special sleeve around the samples was the height of the sample and about 1/4" thick burlap like Carhartt coats are made of. A wide strip of hook n loop Velcro like material kept it from exploding. Ear plugs, safety glasses and a dust mask were standard equipment as the sample was inside a pretty strong cage with about 10mm openings.

I may be on a night shift soon on a project where bearing pads of a bridge are being replaced. They slowly jack up the bridge where it sets on big old slabs of concrete called pier caps. Sometimes bolts that hold it in place get replaced, and/or a portion of concrete the bolts are fastened into. Then the rubber pad between the girder and the pier cap is replaced. At least that is the way it was explained to me.

I went to one project for two nights where the beams were being recoated to observe traffic control, while work took place at the side areas of the roadway. But when the work was to take place in traffic, the lane closure process is so complicated it requires an engineers stamp of approval. The client is waiting on the contractor to hire an engineer to design the traffic control plans. A portion of the interstate where a few other roads merge with it. Lots of curves and sight distance issues exist also. As if that isn't complicated enough it's taking place at a location where being propositioned by a prostitute in broad daylight is not unusual. So it's not unsual for light plants or other things not nailed down be stolen while in use. lol. Kinda hope they don't ask me to go back to that one. A 3D Maglite (at least) should be standard equipment on that one.


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## bykfixer (Dec 17, 2020)

We need to work a night shift on my project soon. I drew the short straw. While others sighed in relief I was smiling on the inside. It's an opportunity to play with flashlights again. The usual roster will tag along with a couple new Maglite numbers. It's the kinda place with a lot of graffitti so I'll be carrying flashlights that can double as a hammer (wink wink).


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## AstroTurf (Dec 17, 2020)

that'll show em the light...


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## bykfixer (Dec 17, 2020)

Laburnum at 195 if you are familiar with that area Astro.
That area will be closed to traffic from tomorrow night (12/18) until Mon morning around 5am.


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## AstroTurf (Dec 17, 2020)

I am, Stay Safe!!!

and Merry Christmas.


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## bykfixer (Dec 19, 2020)

Wasn't a lot of need for a flashlight on this one. 
I used my hard hat lamp to see grades at times but other than that my little 1000 lumen flashlight was like a gallon bucket of water in a giant pond. 
I was ok with that. The only person carrying a flashlight besides me was a foreman carrying an old 4D Maglite with converted with an LED pill. It was silver. You've probably seen a person at some point who makes large objects look smaller. 





The foreman is that sort of person. 
He's so big he made his 4D Maglite appear like a 3C in scale of flashlight to person. 

It's not easy to tell in the top photo but a crop circle looking area was cut out of the roadway in preparation to set a pre-made set of concrete sections onto the indention in the pavement that will be a brick looking round-about when the project is completed. Not a simple feat to cut out a circle in pavement to be level in all directions in an area of a roadway that is actually sloped in a dome shape where the concrete pieces are to be set. In the distance the machine that cut out the circle is munching the top 2 inches off of the existing pavement for covering with new asphalt later. 

This is all taking place at was a 4 way stop sign intersection.

It was plenty cold out so it took a minute to get dressed with enough insulation to thwart the frosty breeze that was making it pretty obvious if there were any cracks in the insulation. Get all wrapped up and grab my new 486 lumen Maglite,aim it at the work area and…… nothing. Is this thing even on? Turn it towards my face and YIKES!!, insta-blind. A few minutes later after my retinas had recovered and I could see again I grab the 1000 lumen MagCharger and click the on switch. Again, wth? (Price is Right you lost music plays)…… Is it me or is this place lit up like a cloudy day? I did not dare do the previous idiot move but instead turned around and shined it into an area not lit up by the all night generator. The location was so well lit up you can drive around without your headlights on and not even know it. 

So I stuffed the 486 lumen 2D light in my rear pocket and turned on my head lamp anytime a shadow-ish area about 25 feet away needed lighting up.


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## mickb (Dec 24, 2020)

good review of these lights in industrial settings


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## bykfixer (Jan 23, 2021)

Thursday the boss says "need ya on Friday night please"……ok, but what for? There's a place on the interstate where a short on ramp that goes uphill ends at a spot where the crowd of daily comuters are jockeying for the right lane in order to exit not far from it. You have underpowered fuel efficient automobiles desparately trying to gain speed on an uphill plane while others are jamming on the brakes while vieing for the same space as those planet friendly soda cans on wheels. The result is folks approaching backed up for miles each morning due to the daily collisions at 7, 8, and 9 each and every morning. 

The solution is to extend the on ramp from a 50 yard sprint to a 200 yard dash. The idea being folks criss crossing paths at the same speed, kinda like those old guys in funny hats sweep back and forth in front of each other on go karts in a Christmas parade every year. Now this portion of the interstate is busy nearly 24 hours a day. Especially in summer. Enter a pandemic and cold weather and you get (on average) less traffic for more hours. During the summer at 10pm things are still pretty crowded as vacationers try to move from state to state during the off peak hours. But during winter things have settled by 9pm. 

Ok, they can block a lane at 9 but by 6 am things pick back up so the work had to be done by 5:30 with a half hour cushion just in case. In order to extend the on ramp a wall has to be constructed to keep crashing motorists away from the work taking place at the edge of the busy road. They have to build a road beside the road. Ordinarily 12 foot long section of concrete wall are locked onto one another like a lego wall. But each segments takes some 10-15 minutes. And you need 166 pieces. In this case you have until 5:30 or a penalty applies. We're talking $3000 every 15 minutes beginning at 5:31am. 

The contractor elected to try a new idea. Alluminum panels at 50 feet long. Now that would mean 40 sections versus the 166. And the connections are more like legos versus the clumsy connections of concrete sections so you're now talking 5-10 minutes per section. Each 50 foot section weighs less than one 12 foot concrete section. A 2" x 2' long steel dowel rod poked into the asphalt every 30 feet makes it just as rigid as the concrete wall. So the contractor was able to build the barrier in plenty of time in one night instead of taking two nights. It's the first one of its kind in my area so I was asked to assist a young, up and comer. 

Another little group of adjectives for the ole resume' as well. "First alternative barrier in the district". Yet the contractor (with Punisher decal'd hard hat) doing the wall said "hell I'm just a blind as you are inspector dude". They've put up thousands of miles of concrete barrier up and down the east coast but it was their first time using alluminum panels. If this thing holds up it may become the standard method in time. Much faster to assemble in much less time. At the end of the process the guy said he hopes to build more of them. 






Some of the wall in place. 





Super secret government communications line.
There is some pipe to go in the ground as part of the project and "special permission" had to be granted to install it near the fiber optic line. Now this one is not as super secret as some I've been around where we discovered the "unknown" (read CIA, NSA etc) lines accidently but it is super secret enough where when installing the planned pipes there will be guys in 3 letter clad coaches jackets wearing aviator shades monitoring the work.





My quiver of lighting tools for the evening. 
Modern MagChargers, my trusty PKDL FL2 and old faithful the Streamlight Double Clutch headlamp. 
The FL2 was picked since all this was taking place in a fairly sketchy area.


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## PhotonWrangler (Jan 23, 2021)

Interesting. I've never seen those aluminum panels before but they look like a great idea. And that warning sign on the underground cable needs to be replaced! It needs to be much more readable if they're serious about protecting from excavation.


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## bykfixer (Jan 23, 2021)

But it's a secret……therefore replacing the sign with a new one would make it not a secret. lol


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Jan 23, 2021)

Time and weather sure weren't nice to that signpost. Funny dual tone scheme it got there.

With the dowel rods, these barriers should be pretty immovable. Now I just hope the softness of the aluminium is enough to slow down a crashing car with its deformation but not so much that it's ripped apart before dissipating at least some kinetic energy.

In any case, if the manufacturer can recycle busted ones, I wager the prices may drop even further. It's my hope at least.


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## bykfixer (Jan 24, 2021)

I went to work Friday morning at one task then worked that night on the other. During the day I was issued a pdf of the wall specifics but never read them. I did however read the installation instructions and manufacturers reccomendations for the epoxy glue that holds in the pins where glue is required. 

Point being is the wall may be made of the same steel as guardrail but with the ease of handling I presumed it was alluminum. When I return to work I'll read more. Steel has flexibility that alluminum does not. So my brain was thinking the wall should be of similar stiffness as a concrete. Steel in guardrail on the other hand has a rubber band like effect similar to the cable that halts jet aircraft on an aircraft carrier. 

It's what the feds call "crash worthy", which means absorbs impact or deflects it. So I'll correct my post above if it turns out to be a galvanized steel product.


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## knucklegary (Jan 24, 2021)

Do you remember the auto water bumpers in early 70s? 
I had a girl friend with a VW bug that had those rubber monstrosities hanging off the front and rear. One day driving the Avenues in SF she put both front and rear to work in a multiple rear-enders

That Aluminum barrier looks functionally sound, more so than heavy rubber. Is there a foam or jell inner filler?


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## bykfixer (Jan 24, 2021)

They are hollow Gary. A guardrail beam is around 5mm thick where these are more like 10mm. 

We still use sand filled containers at some crash points in my state but that's when the potential to be hit comes from multiple angles like on an exit ramp. Can't say I've water bumpers here. Perhaps because it freezes in winter and would become like concrete. I do remember wooden barracades though.


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## PhotonWrangler (Jan 24, 2021)

Water bumpers seem,ed like a good idea at the time, but I'm guessing they fail catastrophically when they're hit so they only work once?


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## knucklegary (Jan 24, 2021)

Correct, the ingenious water bumpers only worked once and only safe during slow speeds. After that you tossed them into the junk pile 

We were sitting second in line at a traffic light when got rear ended. The vw was pushed forward.. and boom shaka laka! Drenched from both ends it was like going thru a car wash

Yep, Put back on the good ol chrome steel bumpers


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## CanAm (Jan 25, 2021)

It's always interesting to see what other people are doing for work. It's easy to forget how specialized a lot of people's work is - I wouldn't know where to begin working on an asbestos concrete pipe or organizing a crash barrier install. Right with you on not wanting to be in the office though. Sure, there's other pains in the a**, but they're a lot more bearable.

A D cell mag is hard to beat on runtime, and I've found it has two other big advantages - it's dead simple to operate if you loan it to someone, and it's big enough they aren't likely to pocket or lose it. Also good to have a headlamp in the kit, especially if you're say, sequentially tightening bolts underneath a pipe. In a hole. At night.

Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to your next post bykfixer.


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## bykfixer (Jan 25, 2021)

There was an event I was so glad to see Maglites CanAm. On a cold winter day a fellow brushed the bucket of his mini excavator against a copper tube tied to an asbestos waterline. A small spray of water began to spew from the connection point. Let's say about a gallon an hour so it seemed harmless at 8:30 in the morning. Trouble was the asbestos water line was a buffer line between a low pressure water system to the south and a high pressure system to the north. In other words the system to the south was starved for water volume due to lots of busnisses drawing water from that system without a lot of water stored in tanks nearby. The line to the north had pumps boosting pressure to aid the starving system. The line where the copper pipe was hit was in between. That meant the pressure in that pipe was about 95psi. 

Asbestos pipe is fairly fragile. The small leak was power-washing the pipe from the inside and slowly the leak became larger as asbestos cement was slowly scoured away from the copper tube that feeds a home nearby. By noon there was about a gallon a minute coming out of the pipe now. The contractor contacted a repair guy who wasn't very knowledgeable about the situation at hand. By 4pm it was pretty obvious the guy was a hack as by then water was gushing from the asbestos pipe. 

The county inspector requested the county shut off the water to this 16" water main. "No freaking way" was the answer. Being a buffer line, if the cushion of this line allowing highly boosted water pressure to lessen and suddenly be gone that would mean homes and businesses upstream would have so much water pressure that it would be a huge problem. Without the cushion potential water pressure at an area that normally ran around 100-110 psi would be pushing 200 psi. 

The county had to study drawings and devise a way to build a bypass cushion. At 5:30pm the copper tube had popped out of the main and water was spaying 50' in the air just inches from 5:00 traffic. It was also spraying sideways some and undermining the roadway. One guy walked up to the geyser with the excavator that started the whole thing and placed the bucket near the top of the pipe in order to divert the gyser. No longer were passing motorists being power washed with muddy, gravelly water as they passed by in 25 degree weather after dark had set in. 





The spray abated by the backhoe bucket.

So the repairman was panic'd by then but tried to act cool. The county was off somewhere opening and closing water valves to create a bypass cushion so they could turn off this one and fix it. The only good flashlight on the scene was the one I used to light the scene in the photo. It was my trusty PKDL PR-1 on medium. The rest of the 20 some people there at this point either had celular phone lights or cheap chinese tin toy numbers. 

Suddenly water stopped bubbling out of the ground. At around 8pm the county had succesfully bypassed the pressure reducing cushion and turned off the water main. Yahoo!! Then the county logo clad calvery arrived with proper tools, equipment and flashlights……3D Maglite LED's. I was so happy. I spoke with the county foreman who as it turns out was the brother of a guy I knew pretty well. His family are in the pipe contractor business. He said "grandpa used Maglites, dad uses Maglites and the day they hired me we started using Maglites"……He said "these 3D ones run all freaking night if need be and make pretty good hammers sometimes." 

By 11 the repairman hack was told to get lost, the county had fixed the line and water was turned back on. It took until about 2:30 am to fill the cavity under the roadway. Those 3D Maglites had made a big difference in how a chaotic situation was turned to a sucessful waterline repair.


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Jan 25, 2021)

Damn, this system sounds awfully fragile, byk. I hope at least someone in the county's service now has drawn up a contingency plan for any future cases of this situation, as I doubt they will install a sturdier distribution system anytime soon.

You know, being the only one with a torch on-site when bad mojo runs is empowering... but it does not compare to the relief of not being the only one with a good light source :sweat:


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## bykfixer (Jan 25, 2021)

Jean Luc, the system that county has in place at the time was amazingly efficient. In about 4 hours they discovered using their massive details of as-built drawings how to distribute high pressure water from a giant water main and system to other systems in neaby areas and turn on/off dozens of water valves then have the leaking line ceased without affecting more than a few dozen residents out of tens of thousands. 

To me it was actually pretty impressive how quickly they were able to enact an alternative to their complicated water system. Apparently their maintanance division practices that type of scenario on a regular basis. That counties water system is maintained like a private enterprise. Staff and equipment are paid by the money brought in via water bills or fees paid to connect to their system. So the system in place is set up like a business. Like most government agencies this one does not make a profit. Unlike most government agencies this one does not lose money either. 

So on that Monday about this time of year in 017 I went to work on Monday morning like any other Monday and went home on Tuesday morning like……well, that Monday afterall turned out to not be like any other Monday. After that one a few people working their had better flashlights a few days later.


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## CanAm (Jan 25, 2021)

bykfixer said:


> So on that Monday about this time of year in 017 I went to work on Monday morning like any other Monday and went home on Tuesday morning like……well, that Monday afterall turned out to not be like any other Monday. After that one a few people working their had better flashlights a few days later.



Well at least they're learning from their mistakes. It's very disconcerting to be the only one on the job with a light... 

... and then several weeks later be the only one on the job with a light, AGAIN.

Sounds like the response to that leak was pretty good. I think that a company operating like a private enterprise, but with the government as the majority/only shareholder is often a sweet spot. Tends to reduce the red tape a little without running into some of the cutrate nonsense you get when profit overlaps with public good. Thought that conversation may be dragging things off topic.


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (Jan 25, 2021)

bykfixer said:


> Jean Luc, the system that county has in place at the time was amazingly efficient. In about 4 hours they discovered using their massive details of as-built drawings how to distribute high pressure water from a giant water main and system to other systems in neaby areas and turn on/off dozens of water valves then have the leaking line ceased without affecting more than a few dozen residents out of tens of thousands.
> 
> To me it was actually pretty impressive how quickly they were able to enact an alternative to their complicated water system. Apparently their maintanance division practices that type of scenario on a regular basis. That counties water system is maintained like a private enterprise. Staff and equipment are paid by the money brought in via water bills or fees paid to connect to their system. So the system in place is set up like a business. Like most government agencies this one does not make a profit. Unlike most government agencies this one does not lose money either.
> 
> So on that Monday about this time of year in 017 I went to work on Monday morning like any other Monday and went home on Tuesday morning like……well, that Monday afterall turned out to not be like any other Monday. After that one a few people working their had better flashlights a few days later.



:thinking:
Yeah, you got a point there. It's unfeasible to expect a response time of less than an hour. The narration must have made my brain think of a more sluggish scenario than the events actually elapsed.

Still, I was thinking about the pipe... but then again, no pipe in the market is rated for strength vs. excavator buckets, right?


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## bykfixer (Jan 26, 2021)

The asbestos cement pipe was a short lived idea in America Jean-Luc. It was called "transite" pipe. I do not know if that was a brand name that just stuck like "kool aid" or "q-tip". Too often iur capitalistic ways are short sighted so by the time the powers that be have decided "oops" too often the cost is great to solve the problem. 
We also had another brilliant idea called "orangeburg" pipe for waste water. It was made of the asphalt paper used on roofs and for the insulation on the outside of homes for a while. Most of that stuff has been replaced due to catastrophic failure (surprise)…… but lots of transite pipe is still in the ground in my area. We used concrete pipe for a while but that stuff doesn't seal well. Now there are a few plastics that work fairly well but that county uses what is called ductile iron these days. 

And ordinarily if it takes 4 hours to turn off a simple valve or two that does not speak well of an organization.


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## scout24 (Jan 26, 2021)

Lol Byk, orangeburg pipe. I've been party to replacing a bunch of that in residential service over the years. Unravels from the inside and collapses. Waste pipe, drainage around foundations, runoff for gutters, etc. It was popular for home construction here in the northeast through the 70's I guess. I had a good laugh at your mention of it. Funny how lights like Mag and Streamlight are so well represented amongst construction crews, tow truck drivers, etc. Almost like the work and can take a pretty good beating.


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## bykfixer (Jan 26, 2021)

The waterline break saga began when I was asked to help a coworker catch up on his paperwork. The idea was that I'd inspect stuff while he did his paperwork so the bosses would know where things stood. Why leave the office and visit a project when you can read an electronic diary from the comfort of your chair? 

One day the client was on site when my coworker was off at a doctor appointment. Being new to the project and not having any plans I was flying blind while talking to the client. I mentioned weather, golf, you name it, trying to get to know the guy a little. He complained to my bosses "all he wanted to do was talk about sports, he must not give a darn about the project". After helping the other guy a couple of weeks he came down with a bad case of the flu and was out 3 weeks. He came back on a Friday then that Sunday fell off a ladder and broke his leg. Poor guy. By then the client complained "all he wants to talk about is the project, what's with that guy? Does he care about anything but work?" In other words there was no pleasing the guy. 

When the waterline catastrophe occured all that water was causing massive erosion of soils into a stream. I directed the contractor to place measures that minimized the damage. We were discussing minimizing potential safety issues by shutting down the road with the department of transportation, and local police. There was all kinds of things taking place while the water ran amuck as well. A crew was building a storm drain, another installing a concrete ditch and another building part of the road. 

I arrived home around 3am and by 10 my phone was ringing as folks wanted to know what happened. The situation had made the morning news so politicians wanted answers. So at noon I started writing a detailed report of the day before with hour by hour comentary. Details of notifying various agencies including environmental ones, local first responders, the highway department while describing steps that took place throughout the day and the project work actually accomplished during the crisis and stuff like that. The client read my report and remarked "good Lord, it's a good thing you had that guy there yesterday" lol.


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## bykfixer (May 17, 2021)

I have failed as a flashaholic. 
A couple weeks ago my work truck went into a shop for the Ford techs to chase something wrong in the sound system. An anomoly they said they fixed. I tried it out and nope, still aint fixed. 

In the meantime all of my night shift gear is in that truck. All three head lamps I own, my Bones with speed clip and the current vehicle does not have any spare batteries. I got half way to work and realized "oh crap I only have 5 flashlights with me and no spare batteries. But the thing I miss the most is my night time helmet with a lamp attached. 
Dratz!


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## AstroTurf (May 17, 2021)

LOLz!!!


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## Jean-Luc Descarte (May 18, 2021)

Phew, I thought for a moment that you had to use the phone flash. Don't scare us like that, my friend!


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## bykfixer (May 18, 2021)

It was pretty scarey only being 5 flashlights from having to resort to the cel-light. And working in tim-buc-2 meant no country store for batteries after sundown. 

At one point I clipped my edc 1x aaa to my hard hat brim for a temporary head lamp. Not the same but it was better than nothing. I did have my favorite LED light, the yellow body G2x Pro (320 edition) and as always was impressed with how bright that one appears to be.


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## bykfixer (May 19, 2021)

So last night I had a Bravo hi/lo clipped to my pocket and wanted to shine it on an object about 100 feet awat so "chapow" I whip it out and click the on switch. My instinct was it was the single setting Bones so when what looked like very little light was shining I thought "awe man crap I didn't bring any spares"…… then it dawned on me to twist the tailcap a little. 

Tahah! Let there be bright. 
Sleep, it does a body good. (anybody remember that old milk comercial slogan?)


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## scout24 (May 23, 2021)

Byk- Coming into that "glad to be working night shift" weather, no? Cooler and hopefully a bit less traffic.


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## bykfixer (May 23, 2021)

Awe, yeah. After Memorial Day we expect major traffic this year. And the seasonal oven just kicked on recently with the sauna soon to follow. 

There's another virtue to working at night many value the most; no bosses around. Those pain in the butt types whose sole reason for being employed at the company is to look for things folks are doing wrong. Those people are at home plotting to over throw their boss or if they are out and about they're usually doing something they'd prefer not to get caught doing…… yeah those people. 

And then there's the flashlight fun. 






One guy the other night was holding a thin square dinner plate looking light to light up the work that was absolutely amazing.


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