Halcyon Proteus Burn Times

[yellowduke]

Any Halcyon owners got experience of true burn times? I bought an old Halcyon 18watt HiD Proteus 6 on Ebay earlier this year for £250 -£300 or thereabouts. Decided to give it a burn test yesterday so charged up the battery in the morning and then fired it up and dropped the head in a bucket.

So I come back after 90 minutes and still burning bright. Come back again after 2 hours, then three and then four hours. It is still going strong! This is supposed to have a 2 hour burn time so how do they come up with that?

Not complaining but if I had known you got twice the burn time than they said I might have got a lighter battery pack! I wonder if the slug assembly mayhave some affect? My slug assembly is different to the current one, cylindrical rather than rectangular.

Update: Have been searching the net for pics of older HiD lamps and found one showing an Extreme Exposure Pro 6 10watt HiD that looks exactly like mine. So looks very much like I was had with the 18watt line. Bastid. Oh well I was impressed when I thought it was 18 watts, now I should be even more impressed that it is only 10 and will burn for hours and hours! Now I wonder if the 18 watt lamp will fit and work?

Jim

[Rick Huggins]

http://www.halcyon.net/lights/pro14_spec.shtml

Then scroll down

HTH

[yellowduke]

Thanks Frogman. Found the burntime info there when I thought I had an 18 watt version but have now found that I have the older version of the 10 watt that has the extended slug assembly that is shown here http://www.adventurebound.com.ph/hid.htm. Well a 5.5 hour burntime will be longer than any dive I ever do. I would get a weeks use out of it on a Red Sea liveaboard, pity it is too heavy!

Jim

[MarkP]

Jim,

Don't run your lamp until it fails - keep a meter on the battery so that you can stop before discharging it too far and damaging it. I stopped mine at 10.5V, but on an old battery pack the bulb was still going strong at 9V.

Regards,

Mark

[nigelH]

I have a 6/10
I'm not saying it runs a long time but I don't remember seeing the charger for a bit. I am begining to worry that I left it in Weymouth about four dives ago....

[yellowduke]

Mark,

After 4 hours I decided enough was enough so I am pretty confident the voltage wouldn't have got too low but I have been reading up on that today.

Nigel,

I have never been to Weymouth! And your'e not wrong it goes on and on and on. Should make quite a good video light in fact!

Have been onto Underwater Explorers about spares for it today. All available to order so I might stock up on a few bits as I want this to last.

Jim

[Rick Huggins]

As Mark says, don't run your pack down too low or you'll damage it!