^ Good drop ins but 55 and 75 lumens. Probably forever runtimes.
Good drop in for 3 D cell Maglite?
- Thread starter TD-Horne
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^ Gorilla springs, I call them. 😍
TD-Horne
Newly Enlightened
It seems I've managed go hijack my own thread. I have mixed up 2 radically different uses of flashlights. I regret not having been more careful.
I'm a safety advisor for my church's youth summer camp program. I'm working with the Camping Program Committee on providing appropriate equipment for counselors to use during the 2 to 3 day hiking trips that campers participate in without taking the costs of expensive equipment essentially out of the counselors pay by expecting them to buy it themseleves. Some of the longer serving members of the committee are concerned about a problem that we have had in the past but which has not occurred recently, as in the last 4 operational seasons. We have previously had incidents of campers getting separated from their trip group because they dropped out due to equipment or fatigue issues and went off the trail to rest or adjust their equipment. Because they were off the trail the counselors did not catch their absence immediately. That resulted in emergency missing child searches which some of the committee believe that the counselors were not adequately equipped to initiate. I'm tasked with identifying an appropriate hand light to use should the search continue into the hours of darkness. In trying to exercise due diligence I came to the forum to get information about what lights to suggest. Past counselors and staff told me that the need is a light that throws a fairly wide and EVEN pattern in the near field. Because a search would be occurring in a fully greened up eastern deciduous forest they emphasized that a narrow long throw beam was counter productive because that brighter spot concentrates the vision of the searchers in too narrow a field. Staff asked the US Park Service Protective Rangers and Park Police what kind of lights to get. Turns out that the rangers and police use a flood pattern rechargeable light. They told staff that a flood pattern has been found to be superior, in the dense local woods through which the trails pass, because it gives the eyes a better chance to pick up on anything that is different or doesn't belong in the wider near field. I just took the Park Service personnel's word for that. I laid out the requirements they suggested without taking the time to explain the source of the requirements. That accidentally caused a lot of contributors to substitute their beliefs of what an affective light would be and what's more there is no consensus amongst them. In trying to find the kind of light that would meet the requirements suggested by people who conduct a lot of searches I kept repeating the requirements instead of laying out the reasons for them so that contributors could address those.
Then I went and confused things even more by introducing a different use I have for a personal light. That light is meant for conducting individual work of diverse types during disaster relief operations with the Salvation Army or the Amateur Radio Emergency Service© (ARES©) of the American Radio Relay League. I allowed myself to be distracted from the first use case by a suggestion which one contributor raised. I used, as an example of the diversity of use of such lights that although we may have been dispatched as radio operators we do what the incident command team needs done. I have previously been assigned as a route director to direct people evacuating the effected area while going around roads closed by flooding, downed trees, washed out bridges... We were human detour signs. We had to hang in for ~12 hours until the overburdened local and state road people could come up with portable signs and barricades. So I mixed up too very different questions and caused a lot of needless confusion. The 2 light uses should have been in different threads.
[Interesting side note: local folks kept moving barricades out of their way to reach areas between the detour points and the blocked portion of the closed roads. The fire department auxiliary membership strapped plastic jersey barriers to the roofs of their cars and used the pump on a brush truck to fill them with water. That made them far to heavy to move. I contributed the suggestion that they could be set up offset into the roadway from opposite roadsides so you could drive between them by turning quite slowly between 2 of the filled barricades set only one car length between them with each blocking half of the road.]
Tom Horne
Ohhhh...I sense a challenge coming on...let the time swapping begin!!!Ahhhh.. I can do it in 29.
Given the clarification above, I respectfully suggest to the community that as a courtesy to Mr. Horne in his role as safety advisor to a youth camp, that we limit future suggestions and comments to advance the "lost camper search" thread, and let Mr. Horne open a separate "radio & disaster response" thread for those with knowledge and experience in such things.
I post this admonition without any agenda of my own. I work professionally to manage diverse groups of people with wildly different and often conflicting agendas and guide them in finding workable solutions to their common problems. The conflation of the two threads as recited by Mr. Horne in the quoted text is about as good an example as any of what happens when a discussion goes off-topic.
Finally, may I also ever-so gently request that you please not shoot the messenger? Thank you.
@DaveTheDude. And so it begins. My 3c ML 50L comes up in rotation tonight and I'm lookin forward to it.
Ohhhh...I sense a challenge coming on...let the time swapping begin!!!
But then again I've been using Maglites since the 1980's so there is that...
Tom,
You may be able to get a brand new 3D LED maglight for less than it would cost to get a recommended Malkoff drop-in.
Considering that for years, a 3D with an incandescent bulb was considered the epitome of a traffic wand, you may find that a Dorsey PR2 replacement bulb may do the trick. It'll get 8x the runtime, with enough output to be functional. It won't be as efficient as the LED in a new Maglite, but it will be cheap.
I'd search for a traffic wand diffuser for it. I bought one from maglite years ago, and it was heavy, and thick, and didn't let a lot of light to pass through it. I'm sure there are better solutions available. Maybe Maglite upgraded theirs.
If you want a dedicated light for traffic control you may consider something like this:
They have shorter models, and are available as C or D cell powered. I like the longer model because in part it can be visible in daylight without being lit. I have used it as such and it is quite functional.
OTOH, you may consider that one can use his daily carry light with a diffuser. I am not talking of a keychain light or a penlight for that matter, but a cigar shaped/sized light like a Convoy S2+ or any other 18650 light, or larger (even those that take alkaline cells). Fenix makes a number of different sized diffusers.
I took this picture tonight of a 2AA Rayovac indestructible wearing a Red Diffuser. It sits in a vinyl bag attached to my ashtray, so that it is always at the ready.
The camera adjusted the exposure. To the human eye, it was much more pink, than white.
knucklegary
Flashlight Enthusiast
Over the weekend, a case of 12ea 3D new in clamshell wrapper sold, online auction, for about two hundred plus shipping. That works out to approx $16 bucks per flashlight.
Tom, if it wasn't you who bought the case of Maglite. Then stay alert, flashlights can be found priced very affordable
Tom, if it wasn't you who bought the case of Maglite. Then stay alert, flashlights can be found priced very affordable
TD-Horne
Newly Enlightened
That is a great tip but first I'm going to have some present and past counselors try the lights I've already been sent and find out which type suits them best. Since I'm not going to be with them out on the trail I feel I shouldn't foist my choice on them. The gathering were that will be possible is only 2 weeks away so once I have the feedback I can proceed from there.
Tom Horne
TD-Horne
Newly Enlightened
You know you could upset the balance of the universe by talking sense like that. It's a basic principal of science that the universe has a natural tendency to a greater state of disorder. If I remember correctly it's called entropy. [Well at least the spell checker likes it unlike a lot of things I type.] By helping me get organized you will be working against the laws of physics and as another correspondent reminds me in his tag line "the laws of physics will be strictly enforced."
Tom Horne
knucklegary
Flashlight Enthusiast
When you and staff are together keep CPF posted. It would be nice to see a camp group photo as well..
Summer camp always reminds me of this song 😁
Hello Mother Hello Father https://g.co/kgs/WyZ77B
Ohhh...I remember that. Alan Sherman, yes?
knucklegary
Flashlight Enthusiast
Hello Muddah.. Hello Faddah, "A letter from Camp Granada" it's the only song I remember Allan Sherman ever performing. He was a very funny guy!
TD-Horne
Newly Enlightened
I'll do a photo of all of the staff and counselors who are over 18 and willing to be photographed. That's the best I can do given the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends' (Quakers) youth protection policy, which forbids photographing anyone under 18 years of age without the consent of their parents and the subject themselves. That would be too awkward to obtain. There is a fairly good glimpse of the 3 camps at
Fire at the Center
<>
Thing is that the Camping Program Committee put in the effort to get those permissions for this video. The woman talking about mud pies was a counselor then. She is the Youth Programs Coordinator for the entire Regional Meeting now.
Tom Horne
Just a small tip for those of you who wouldn't know this instinctively, as I didn't. If you are at the general meeting of any organization that has Children and/or Teenagers as active participants and the youth program, coordinator, secretary, minister, director... spots your face and develops a beatific smile here is what you do. Pull out your cell phone, look at it, put a horrified look on your face, and make for your car just as fast as your legs will carry you as if the devil himself was chasing you on roller skates. If you don't you could end up like me involved in that organizations youth program for decades and loving every minute of it! Tom
TD-Horne
Newly Enlightened
I've much appreciated your previous help. Please bear with me. When we are on a deployment we go were they send us. I've heard of people being detailed to traffic direction on a low capacity road but only when the problem to be solved was to keep people from unknowingly driving into a flooded road, wires down, fire smoke causing poor visibility on barely improved roads. I've several times had to go to 4 lane roads and signal people were to turn for the cleared evacuation route.
[let me ask has anyone, other than our radio team, had to resort to keeping their flashlight inside the sleeve of their coat with only the light end; or in our case the traffic cone; sticking out beyond the sleeve to keep the batteries from getting too cold. A State Police Officer showed me that when I was warning traffic of the snow plows ahead during a colossal snow storm that closed North Eastern Massachusetts for 5 days. Anything that they could stick a plow on including big graders and trash trucks had been put into service. The National Guard was moving snow with big articulating front loaders.
In addition to plows that could remove show that deep there was nowhere that had yellow/amber warning lights left in stock. So we walked behind them with poster board signs sprayed with a clear coating to keep them from becoming soaked by thrown slush and freezing rain that just said plows ahead. We had to be ready to scramble up the plow berm to dodge errant traffic. They see your light, hit their brakes, and come sliding right at you.]
You really can be trying to get the attention of a lot of drivers when being an evacuation route guide. What is used are yellow traffic wands. In many states the use of Red Lights is reserved for vehicles registered as Emergency Vehicles. It was 1968 but they LEOs were real tetchy about it.
Tom Horne
All that snow in the picture looks pretty good right now.
aznsx
Flashlight Enthusiast
First, just as an 'aside': When I was young, I did once get a nice stock replacement dash toggle switch (for another lighting function) for my car, mounted it along side the existing switch, and controlled my back-up / reverse lights with it - not so much to disable them (although certainly that as well), but rather to turn them on at will to provide rear lighting. This also allowed me to switch them on when driving to enable me to send "get off my 'a'' in Morse code. Just kidding about the code, but I didn't need to send a coded message. Merely switching them on and off, perhaps multiple times, would usually produce the desired result. Had I been as cool as Steve Mc, I would have had another to kill my rear running / brake lights. I'm pretty sure that was an ol' moonshiners' trick. Not that I would know, but I did grow up in the deep South.
...
Having lived in your area (a bit North - Owings Mills area), and often regularly worked many points well North of there (up to and including N. Eng and MN in Winter, and even bloody Alaska in Jan. several times!), it is a sincere personal objective of mine to never deal with such snow (or temps) again. That photo alone gives me nightmares.
That said, regarding your question about flashlight batts and cold temps, only 2 things occur to me. One is to optimize the power source for the conditions by using only lithium primary cells (CR123A, etc) which are optimal for cold environments. The other is, rather than trying to optimize heat dissipation as we normally do, to do the opposite: reduce heat dissipation by covering the light housing with something with thermal insulating properties - not unlike those things people place on their aluminum cold beverage cans. This would help retain / conserve the available heat generated instead of it's going to waste, and the combination would have to help some (relative to a naked Al, alkaline-powered light) in such conditions. Barring use of active heat sources, that's all I can think of, aside from use of lights with a remote batt pack, which would open up other possibilities, but would likely be inconvenient.
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), with high energy density and power density, exhibit good performance in many different areas. The performance of LIBs, however, is still limited by the impact of temperature. The acceptable temperature region for LIBs normally is −20 °C (-4F) to ~ 60 °C (140 F).
I think that lithium primaries do a little better.
I think that alkalines fail when they freeze at 32F.
I think that lithium primaries do a little better.
I think that alkalines fail when they freeze at 32F.
