Thursday
Jul152010

Torches

 

Under Eu Ops 1.640, which covers Aeroplane Operating Lights, an electric torch is required for each crew member readily accessible to the crewmember when seated at their designated station.  It does not specify what type of torch it should be, and I have flown aircraft which have ordinary, household battery operated torches and aircraft which have rechargeable torches fitted to the aircraft.

All torches operate the same way; you switch it on!

So, to that end, in this section I am only going to deal mainly with the rechargeable torches as they can be presumed to be aircraft equipment as they are fitted to the aircraft.

The first example is the DME Corperation EF- 2C Rechargeable Utility Flashlight.

I have found this torch on a variety of aircraft.  It is used a lot on commercial airliners and for bizjets, it seems to be the favoured torch of the Dassault Falcons.

The EF-2C is a high intensity, hand-held rechargeable flashlight with mounting bracket that is easily installed on walls, bulkheads, and partitions in aircraft.  It is light weight, the whole unit weighs 1.25 lbs/0.57 kgs with the torch itself only weighing .75 lbs/0.34 kgs.

It provides 120 minutes of illumination in excess of 2900 candlepower when fully charged and is constructed with ABS flame retardant material.  It is also waterproof, and floats beam up in water.