Appeared in DIVER August 2012
Today I am going to reveal that there is something else I don't know, and that is the origin of the term ‘Goodman handle'.
I REMEMBER THE DAY MY SON ASKED ME A QUESTION and I confessed to not knowing the answer. I saw the disappointed look on his face when he realised that his dad was not omniscient. He was two years old.
Today I am going to reveal that there is something else I don’t know, and that is the origin of the term “Goodman handle”.
Was it named after Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, because of the way he held his clarinet, or was it named after Will Goodman, the man who currently holds the record for the longest seawater dive of 33 hours and 24 minutes
What I do know is that it’s the handle for a lamp that allows a diver to do something else with his fingers while holding it, and is therefore popular with cave-divers who might be under water in the dark for long periods of time.
The Halcyon Mini Explorer lamp comes with a unique style of Goodman handle that can be fitted in various ways to suit the user, including being closed up, so that it protects the lamp during transport.
The Lamp
The Mini Explorer is a pocket-sized lamp measuring only 12 x 5cm without the handle, and it weighs less than 300g. It’s machined from Delrin and the handle is attached by means of a large screw-nut rather like the screw thread of a photographer’s tripod.
It is fired up using three AA-size lithium batteries that are held in a chassis and switched on by screwing down the over-sized plug at the rear end to make contact.
This plug has a hole drilled into it for fitting a lanyard or a double-ender clip. The light source, a single high-intensity LED, will burn for around four and a half hours from one set of batteries. You can also use other AA batteries, but the burntime will vary.
There are several ways to rig the handle. You’re meant to slot the thumb into the cut-out for hands-free operation, but I found that the longer part was not long enough for my palm so I used it initially with my first finger passing through the cut-out.
Where it came into its own was when I used it during a night dive as the aiming light for my camera. I found that I could make the long shank of the Goodman handle vertical and grip it together with the vertical handle of my camera housing very comfortably.
The Beam
The beam was anything but even. In fact it proved to be very patchy and not very round. It wasn’t very wide, but it was bright enough, and the long burntime makes it appealing for those dive trips far away.
COMPARABLE LAMPS TO CONSIDER:
Hollis LED5, £72
Light & Motion Sola 500D, £335
Aqua Lung Alu Trio, £199
SPECS
PRICE £269
BURNTIME 4.5 hours
BATTERIES 3xAA
CONTACT Silent Planet's website
