LIGHT OF MY LIFE
Rob Sloane turns on the latest headlamps from Princeton Tec

“Turn it off. Turn that bloody light off!” That’s my wife not fully appreciating the importance of an in-depth FlyLife review. I’ve been using a couple of headlamps on and off (probably what annoys her) for several months now and still can’t dim those batteries. Marvellous technology.

I personally don’t have a problem with wearing a headlamp to bed. It would prove extremely useful in case of some nocturnal natural disaster, or a blown light bulb in the bathroom perhaps. And very handy for hunting spiders, or reading a few pages, or scribbling some late-night notes—you know, those words you visualise with absolute clarity in the middle of the night but never remember in the morning.

One thing I do still remember is my room-mate laughing when my silly little torch rolled off the bedside table on the first night in New Caledonia and the bulb did not respond to any amount of hard shaking. I had told everyone to be prepared for lights-out after the generator curfew and I was the only one left in the dark, for a week.

Never again. I now have a bag full of headlamps from the Princeton Tec people and they are the absolute bee’s knees. My favourite, the Yukon HL, at $129.95 is the top of the range. Powered by three AA batteries this hybrid lamp combines a powerful 1-watt LED (25 hours of useful light) for extreme brightness and distance (sufficient to guide my boat home after dark) with three high-output, 5 mm LEDs in a triangular arrangement, for long burn time (120 hours) and close-up applications.

At 8 oz (with batteries) this really is the big brother but still comfortable enough to wear while fishing at night. With adjustable head-straps it even sits nicely on my wide-brim hat. The Yukon’s more compact siblings, including the Aurora ($79.95) and Scout ($59.95), are lighter (2.8 and 1.6 oz w.b.), being powered by smaller AAA batteries, but are still more than adequate for night-walking, fish-netting and fly-changing applications.

The EOS ($99.95) is a new model and a good compromise between weight (3.7 oz w.b.), efficiency and distance capability. It features the new 1-watt LED technology and a collimator (focus lens) to direct light into an intense beam. A simple switch lets you change from high output to energy saving modes in all models—the blinking emergency signal mode could be handy but this is the one that annoys Libby most.

Although sooty-faced Welsh miners may be the first thing you think of, these hands-free adjustable headlamps have endless above-ground applications, from setting up tents to campfire cooking to changing flat tyres to rowing boats to playing and landing fish.

They are impact resistant and waterproof, although I do take mine off before having a shower.