Tag archives: Petzl

Big Guns – New Toys…

We went somewhere very BIG recently so I fancied taking some serious ‘firepower’ with me for light painting and general all roundnosiness, we were bristling with a variety of stuff anyway like variousLenser’s,Petzls,SureFires, Underwater Kinetics andSpeleoTechnics but I was still hankering for something silly, off the scale and OTT so I splashed for aThrunite CatapultV2…The Thrunite CatapultV2 is a revised version of the existing Catapult but with a redesigned driver. It’s a genuine 1000 out the front lumens on high due to the totally insane Luminus SST-50 LED.

You can run a variety of different batteries (CR123, 18650 or 17670) as it comes with two battery tubes.Its designed for Search & Rescue so as a result it falls into the ‘Long Range Thrower’ category so take care if you want to use this for close up light painting cos it kicks ass and has quite a tight beam!!!Physically it seems bomb proof and it has IPX-8 Water & Dust Resistance, I certainly dropped it many times during the day and didn’t notice any ill effects.

This is a SERIOUS flashlight but is not cheap…

Old Warden Tunnel

This was more of a camera/long exposure/torch experimentation than an explore but some of the pictures turned out half decent to I thought I would post up a quick report.

Old Warden Tunnel was built between 1853 and 1857 to connect Bedford to Hitchin, before joing the main line to London. It was closed in 1962 but not as a result of Dr. Richard Beeching’s ‘Beeching Bombshell’ report. The tunnel is straight and runs for 882 yards. The western end is half bricked up but with a large grille at the top to allow access for bats. I’m no bat expert but I have heard that a rare bat called the Barbastelle has been found in this tunnel from time to time. The eastern end has been partially backfilled and the trackbed at this end is flooded quite deeply. Internally there are some interesting Calcite formations on the walls and at the far end a small crystalline ‘Calcite Lake’ has formed.

Most pictures were taken at either 15s or 30s exposure and lit with either a Lenser P7 or a Petzl MYO XP