Princeton Tec Rant

[Jeff Bartlett]

It amazes me how ppl trash the APEX as a caving light (IMHO its deserved) then buy 11 of them!

I started to write a snarky response to this but then I noticed Andy had already done that for me. Probably for the best. Regardless, until I can convince Princeton Tec's warranty department to send me my $200 back instead of 3 more crappy Apexes, I'm stuck living with the light-purchasing decisions I made in 2007 and having them send me new ones every year.

My wife and I now both cave on Stenlights and the Apexes are used as backups, which is a shame considering they rarely work and apparently can't even handle being padded and kept in a drybag inside a cave pack. If anyone would like to donate something reliable for us to use as backups, you know where to find me.

[Chads93GT]

No I wont be cave diving. There is a big difference between 6-8" of air, and no air. Besides, our closest "near sump" this weekend will be........2 inches if we are lucky. less if not. the cave has a way of rebuilding the gravel bar we dig out to lower the water down to 6 inches or so. Another near sump, was a sump till we blew it up, is maybe 3" in a channel smaller than the width of your head...........6" is nothing, i mean, you can hold your head sideways and deal with that easily. 4" you tend to have half your face under, or you start sucking air. less than that...........tends to make me nervous.......

Dove 1 sump...........never doing it again.

[Chads93GT]

Don't like water? Stay tuned for a crap your pants "short clip" of a trip im doing this weekend in our project river cave. I have a new HD waterproof video camera I am taking along to document the entire door to door route and im sure you will enjoy the portions with low air and the 3 foot long carp that dry to drown you by splashing water down your throat as you breath ;), lololol

Note to self: Never EVER go caving with Chad. I would love to see the video after your trip, though. I'm impressed by cavers who can handle water situations with finesse and cave divers are like rock stars to me. I wish I could do the things those of you who aren't deathly afraid of the water have no problem doing. I joined a cave diving Yahoo Group quite awhile back to read about their adventures because I'm jealous. Did you ever do cave diver training or do you think you will someday? It sounds like you'd right at home in an underwater cave. I'll be your Facebook groupie if you become a regular diver and post pictures & stories about your underwater caving exploits .

The water issue isn't something I'll ever be able to overcome, unfortunately. I can swim and I float the Meramec like everybody else out my way but you won't catch me swimming next to the raft unless the damn thing gets caught on a fallen tree & I have to deal with it (that pants crapping inducing mess happened to us over the summer) or it starts sinking. I even freak out if I get water up my nose in the shower.

Er, I didn't actually crap my pants. Probably had something to do with the Immodium I'd taken before the trip.

Joe Walsh and company surveyed the rimstone river cave, just down the road from my house, in boats.............

[commanderzoom]

No I wont be cave diving. There is a big difference between 6-8" of air, and no air. Besides, our closest "near sump" this weekend will be........2 inches if we are lucky. less if not. the cave has a way of rebuilding the gravel bar we dig out to lower the water down to 6 inches or so. Another near sump, was a sump till we blew it up, is maybe 3" in a channel smaller than the width of your head...........6" is nothing, i mean, you can hold your head sideways and deal with that easily. 4" you tend to have half your face under, or you start sucking air. less than that...........tends to make me nervous.......

Dove 1 sump...........never doing it again.

Even the stuff you just described is beyond me. Can't do it. It's a source of mild shame for me, especially because I live in MO. If I end up going on trips with situations like that a ways, inside I'll have to stay on my side while the others head on through. I know I'll be sitting there, probably all alone, hyperfocusing on my thoughts. I'll have myself convinced that that one damned watery passage is what separates the real cavers from the wannabe's and that the others are mad at me for tainting their experience by the time they get back .

Caving is one of the few things that I care enough about to actually obsess over things like that. I was the same way back in high school when I was learning to play guitar. I'm not nearly as neurotic as I'm sounding on Cavechat.

[Chads93GT]

What is the problem with walking through water filled pools up to your chest with the ceiling just over your head? especially when you get to the end of the pool and realize its only there because of a gravel bar build up? extremely low air I get, deep water, I get that too, but regular old water passages? nothing over knee deep even if yuou can see the bottom? whaaat the hail? You would have hated that mertz sump diving trip then, haha.

I find that peer pressure (large groups with you in the middle) tends to get you over your fears quite easily. having a debilitating fear sucks, best thing to do is face it head on and tackle it. Its just water, and getting on rope........its just gravity ;)

[commanderzoom]

The problem is me being insane. It's like I randomly developed a fear of drowning sometime in early childhood and it's gotten worse and worse ever since. It's totally irrational so there IS no explanation for it. Kinda like my husband's irrational fear of being eaten by "river monsters"--he doesn't get more specific than that--in above-ground natural bodies of water (rivers, creeks, oceans, probably even puddles). We'll go on group float trips but don't even bother trying to have anyone besides the 2 of us in the raft/canoe. We don't hate anyone enough to do that to them .

I've never had a near-drowning experience, no members who drowned, no friends who drowned. Dad came close when he was a little kid and an undercurrent in the Meramec got ahold of him but obviously I wasn't around to witness it. He has a legitimate reason to fear water and yet he was on the rowing team in college and floated around the river passage in Onondaga all the time as a child--without adult supervision.

[self-deleted_user]

Yeah I have on rope issues (you can find an earlier post of mine up in general about how on earth to get over it). I'm just going slowwww. And it's helping to go that route. Tried the "just do it" route and good thing I was only 6 or so feet up and my friend was below me 'cause my reaction to starting to slide back down was to drop everything and grab frantically at air (erm, I take it that's not a natural response ha!) so now I'm just going slow...learning knots, how the gear all works together, etc from the safety of standing on the ground for a while before I got back on rope and now I just have to learn a bit more before I'd feel ok dropping a pit or something.

Water though, I <3 water, I'm good with it. Low air is fine. As long as there is some air. Or a short sump that's easily freedivable. That's okay too. In fact, all of my favorite caves have been caves with lots of water in them. I love it. Especially ones with waterfalls. There is something immensely cool about about climbing waterfalls underground!

Everyone's different, peer pressure can be great, it also can fail and make things so much worse. Probably depends if it is with a group of your cavebuddy friends you've known for a while, so they know your fear, know what you have troubles doing, and yet know you can do it so somehow imo that gives them the "right" - because of that history together - to go the pressure route. Not that it always works, but again with a group like that should know a clear "no, this isn't helping, it's making it worse" because, well, again they know you you know them, so folks are aware when it's not helpful. Pressure like that, sure fine. I can't stand pressure from people I don't really know though. They, imo, have no right to try and force me to do things I'm not comfortable with.

Speaking of water though, on my UK trip (soooo much water in those caves I did, loved 'em!) I noticed I think my PT Corona has similar issues as the Apex...would that post (I think it was NZCavers?) work to help further waterproof my Corona?

[NZcaver]

Speaking of water though, on my UK trip (soooo much water in those caves I did, loved 'em!) I noticed I think my PT Corona has similar issues as the Apex...would that post (I think it was NZCavers?) work to help further waterproof my Corona?

Very interesting. Haven't heard of water problems with the Corona before. I was going to suggest posting about it in a new topic or old Corona topic, but since this topic is a Princeton Tec Rant (not just an Apex rant) just throw the info out right here. Describe what happened in detail. Any photos? Feel like taking the headlamp apart to see what makes it tick?

My first shot in the dark would be the O-ring seal needs cleaning/lubing or replacing. Or possibly the cable penetration needs some extra sealant. Any problems with water in the battery compartment?

PS - regarding peer pressure, there's a huge difference between pressure and peer support. The former can be a negative, especially with folks you don't really know and/or trust. The latter is consistent with almost every caving trip.

[NZcaver]

Speaking of water though, on my UK trip (soooo much water in those caves I did, loved 'em!) I noticed I think my PT Corona has similar issues as the Apex...would that post (I think it was NZCavers?) work to help further waterproof my Corona?

Very interesting. Haven't heard of water problems with the Corona before. I was going to suggest posting about it in a new topic or old Corona topic, but since this topic is a Princeton Tec Rant (not just an Apex rant) just throw the info out right here. Describe what happened in detail. Any photos? Feel like taking the headlamp apart to see what makes it tick?

My first shot in the dark would be the O-ring seal needs cleaning/lubing or replacing. Or possibly the cable penetration needs some extra sealant. Any problems with water in the battery compartment?

No I don't have any photos of it....I don't have money for a new primary so I don't feel like taking it apart (I may be a scientist, but I'm used to bio things not mechanical things and tend to destroy what I take apart because I don't know what I'm doing with it haha) it just fogged up some on the *inside* not like fog fog where it really "dimmed" the light like a window fogging up making it hard to see through, but misty-like, on the inside of the light part of it. No water in the battery compartment or anything. Okay I know this is a car, but I just googled to try and find an image of what it was like (just, you know, smaller scale and not quite this bad, I'd say about 30% coverage of what this shows) It actually happened in GB (climbing up the falls, water pouring down on mah head!), but I left my helmet/light in the drying room overnight with the rest of my wet clothes and it was clear the next day, and oddly enough did not do the same thing in Swildons - which, it was in more water in Swildon's but it was not in a "pouring down on my head" more like "got dunked here and there".

PS - regarding peer pressure, there's a huge difference between pressure and peer support. The former can be a negative, especially with folks you don't really know and/or trust. The latter is consistent with almost every caving trip.

Ah that is a good way to differentiate it. Guess it's also kinda in how you do it. I think I'd still more call it peer pressure that I run into because it usually isn't "oh you can do it!" (support) it's "You are going to do this!" (pressure!) but you can say the later friendly with a smile or growling i-cant-believe-we-have-to-wait attitudes - which makes all the difference. And personal personalities too...I do well with pressure in the friendly way - even with new cavebuddies I don't have an established trust/relationship with yet - but that might not be true of everyone. If it were in the growling manner of negative pressure...with that I just shut right down...it's actually kinda pathetic actually how much - it's like someone flipped my power switch to "off" ha.

[Anonymous_Coward]

Very interesting. Haven't heard of water problems with the Corona before.

My Corona used to spontaneously turn on while I was hosing off my cave gear in the back yard. When it did this, there was no way to turn it off besides taking the batteries out. I even had it do this on a wet cave trip once. It stayed on, worked just fine, but I could not turn it off or change the brightness setting. I only had this happen once, while the backyard spray-off thing happened several times. I suspect it might be a similar issue to the Apex as the Corona also has two different colors of plastic that come together at the seal.

This was one of the experiences that led me to share Scott's conclusion:

Princeton Tec does not make caving lights. Plan accordingly.

I sort of fall into the camp of "If you can't spray it off with the hose without f-ing it up, it ain't cave gear." When possible, I prefer to buy cave gear that has been designed by actual cavers.

[self-deleted_user]

Well the question remains, do you suppose the mods that NZ talked about would help my Corona? I really do like it - and it's my primary light (and, er, right now only light as indeed the backup coleman cheapy thing got bashed up too much - now that one I might take apart to fix but then could I really rely on it as a backup?? I think not knowing me haha...I really need to get another backup before January's trip) believe me if I could I'd have a Scurion or Stenlight or such...or even soemthing like http://www.ledcaplamps.com/ one of those like the Trigon or such would be awesome. But...that's a bit out of budget. 110 pounds exchange rate is still close to $200 range.

[Chads93GT]

You are missing the biggest "mod" to the corona if its failed you. SEND IT BACK. its under warranty!

[self-deleted_user]

Well like I said, it dried itself out so it's fine now. But cool, I was just wondering if it was possibly under warenty. I remember saving the box for some reason or another. Woot! So...erm...yeah although I just posted in the flood thread again since I'm wondering 'bout a new light (to take over as primary) I might just go ahead with an Apex since those have the lifetime warenty too. *shrugs* Still wondering if there is a better option before I commit though so you should all go check out that thread :P

[Chads93GT]

Goto princeton tec's website, find their customer support link and email them that it flooded. regardless of it dried out, the inside will now be corroded and start corroding...............which makes it on the fritz.

[NZcaver]

You are missing the biggest "mod" to the corona if its failed you. SEND IT BACK. its under warranty!

The purpose of the waterproof mod is to do it to your new headlamp before it has a problem. If the old one is fritzed, send it back for a new one and then do the mod. Not sure how it would work with the Corona, because I haven't taken one apart before. Seems to work OK with the Apex, though.