Adventures in exploring infrastructure, underground and other interesting locations
Got stuff spread around a bit at the moment due to ‘storage issues’ so often forget I have squirreled things away on various portable hard drives…found these three from early 2013 on yet another visit to Drakelow RGHQ 9.2
We’d seen all there was to see so spent time pissing about with a Quark RGB and one of those shitty cheap Chinese Green Lasers, don’t think it looks that great but here it is anyway, along with an ok Roadway shot that made itself to a calendar page this year…
Playing catch up with pix as I’m running out of year, these are from March 2013, think it was an official SubBrit thing run by KURG from memory (but that’s not important).
What is important is to tell the story nobody else chose to tell (i.e. they would rather people didn’t know it happened so they didn’t get mugged off…) I quite like the truth though, especially when people try to cover it up so lets tell the story shall we? 🙂
As stated earlier this was an official/invite trip to Shorts Brothers Seaplane Factory as opposed to the DiY visits that will soon get it permanently sealed.
Some people seem to think if you go on an organised trip then its not cool and you run the risk of getting laughed at on some of the ‘narcissist/look at me’ forums out there, they fear criticism by their peers and long for praise. To me this smacks of low self esteem and a need to feel loved by someone…a bit like a dog who feels happy and accepted if he gets a nice stroke and who feels over the moon if someone tosses him a bone.
Me? I couldn’t care less how I get into places as long as I get to see them and as a result of this probably 15% of what I do is ‘official’…who cares!
Getting back to the story…there’s two guys on this trip from a well known forum (actually one of them is now a Moderator), but they try to keep this quiet because:
A) They would almost certainly have been denied access and
B) They would be the laughing stock of their forum.
Their plan fails spectacularly on Option B as word got out on this forum and a few members did a DiY visit the night before and left a ‘calling card’ for these two guys to show them they were ‘busted’ by their forum buddies. When I say ‘calling card’ what I actually meant was strategically placed piles of fresh, glistening, human turds along with spray painted arrows pointing to their actual real world names (also spray painted) on the floor at various point in the tunnels. Naturally this shocked some members on the visit and enraged others and very quickly there was a guessing game (in pitch darkness) to eliminate the two Turd Targets.
Me and Winch found this hilarious but the organisers didn’t (understandably) but for me it goes to show the duplicity of this lot, they’ll hide in plain sight to get on trips like this, then rip and slate the hand that feeds them when in the company of others, alas this is the world we live in these days.
Here’s a few pix anyway, I did get some turd shots but I don’t want to name names, how would you feel if there was a picture of your name next to a steaming pile of turd?
As mentioned on this blog previously I am a self confessed ‘flashlight whore’. I’ve not done an audit for a long time and I don’t really care to either as I may even shock myself, lets just say I most likely own too many flashlights…
Doing lots of underground shots presents its own lighting problems, one of which is colour temperature. These new fangled LED’s although wonderfully bright seem to produce a very blue beam which tends to make the pictures suck. This issue gets further compounded when I use two or more different lights to paint a shot as you end up with differing ‘blueness’. Of course this all gets fixed later in post as I have to even up the Colour Temperature but what if you could get a flashlight with a ‘neutral’ temperature…?
The theory was to try something from the wonderful people at 4Sevens as they are a company started and run by a self confessed Flashaholic called David Chow who produced a Limited Edition run of Cool, Warm and Neutral temperature lights. Most of these are now discontinued but luckily I managed to pick up a 4Sevens Quark RGB Neutral White from Led Fire Torches.
The 4Sevens Quark RGB Neutral White also has another neat feature (the clue is in the name!!) and that’s a quad die emitter so it has a different colour in each corner (white, red, green, and blue) so I get to kill two birds with one stone:
A) Have a nice neutral light to paint with underground.
B) Try some Troy Paiva type stuff using the coloured die.
Quark RGB Neutral White specs:
Length: 4.8 in
Diameter: 0.86 in
Weight: 1.8 oz (without batteries)
Finish: Type-III hard-anodized aircraft-grade aluminum
Batteries: 2 CR123A
(All lumen outputs are COOL WHITE, Out-the-front)
   * Moonlight: 0.4 lm, 650 hours, 1 ma
   * Low: 2.8 lm, 130 hours, 10 ma
   * Med: 15.0 lm, 25 hours, 50 ma
   * High: 58.4 lm, 7.5 hours, 250 ma
   * Turbo: 150 lm, 2 hours, 700 ma
   * SOS: 22.5 hours
   * Strobe: 4 hours
   * Beacon: 20 hours
From 4Sevens:
The Quark RGB features a CREE MCE-RGB emitter. The MCE-RGB is a quad-die emitter that features a different color for each corner of the die: white, red, green, and blue!
The Quark RGB UI is unique. When the head is tightened, it is always white (or neutral white depending on your model). When the head is loosened, it is one of the RGB colors. Cycling between loose and tight will toggle through the three colors.
The way to change modes is similar to the regular Quarks. Just tap the tail button to change modes (or just turn it on and off within 3-4 seconds). It will toggle between eight modes: moonlight -> low -> medium -> high -> max -> S.O.S -> strobe -> beacon.
Additionally, it will remember the last mode used even after you turn off the flashlight. It will also remember which mode you used in both the tightened and loosened state as well as which color was used in the loosened mode.
As soon as I get the chance I will be out testing this new toy 🙂
