Tactical Flashlights becoming stale?

[Lightraven]

Even the simple things can be a blessing and a curse.

Take Surefire's patented lockout tailcaps. When I first started to carry my new Surefire M6, I found that it was easy to bump the button, especially when seated, causing the light to turn on.

So, I did the obvious and locked the tailcap off. When I jump out of my vehicle to chase somebody on foot, I know from "life experiences" to put the vehicle in park, turn off the engine, take the keys and sometimes lock the doors or kill the siren. What I didn't do was "unlock" my flashlight. So there I am, chasing some guy at full tilt in the dark, while mashing the flashlight button and getting no light. I quickly remember the tailcap is locked out and now have to bring both hands together to unlock the tailcap while still chasing the runner.

Everything is so obvious when you're standing still in good light doing one thing under no real pressure--like remembering to unlock your light. But do 6 things quickly, in the dark, and it's not so easy. That's why I love ambushes--I get time to get ready and be totally prepared and focused when the foot chase (or anything else) begins.

Some "tactical" lights do annoying things. The Novatac, like the original EDC's, has a ramping feature to hold a constant light level. This is a distraction. I turn on the light and it immediately ramps down by briefly turning off and back on dimmer, then flickers back to a brighter level, then who knows? It draws my attention, when I shouldn't even be aware of my light.

My Fenix P2D was a problem from the second week, and barely got any field use.

My Nightcore's multiple modes and features mean I use it mostly for administrative tasks or with suspects who are under control.

 

[Search]

The story about the M6 was something I've never thought of.

I planned on getting a Z2 and putting a Malkoff in because I've found that to be the best option for me.

I hope that while using a holster I can avoid hitting the light by keeping it at a good spot on my belt.


The rest of your quote is why I would only use lights that turn off and on, like the Z2 or M6. I carried a PD30 early on in my training and we were clearing building using Simunition. It almost got me shot having the light go into strobe while trying to use momentary.

 

[KiwiMark]

Even the simple things can be a blessing and a curse.

Take Surefire's patented lockout tailcaps. When I first started to carry my new Surefire M6, I found that it was easy to bump the button, especially when seated, causing the light to turn on.

So, I did the obvious and locked the tailcap off.

I know what you mean. They can make it harder to turn on accidentally - then people complain that it is hard to turn on. And an easy to turn on forward clickie which isn't locked out is not much good if it has drained the batteries before you pull it out of your pocket.

I have once had my Jet-I Pro turn on in my pocket - I knew it had turned on because I felt a growing warmth. So I lock out the light (anodised threads on tailcap) and now when I pull it out I have to remember to tighten the tailcap before I can turn it on. I don't even know how it turned on and got to the 3rd setting, but it did despite a recessed reverse clickie button.

My Olight Ti Infinitum has no tailcap lockout because of the titanium happily conducting through the threads. It also has a forward clickie. I carry it every day, but have to keep it in my jacket pocket rather than my jeans pocket (where the locked-out Jet-I lives).

My Olight M20 is easier to turn on with a forward clickie switch that sticks out a decent amount, but it wont tailstand like my Jet-IIIM can.

I guess it is really hard to make a light perfect in every way. My M20 has a holster so it is less likely to accidently turn on - but it is not impossible to have something press the button while sitting in a car without you noticing it. You might see the glow at night but if it flattened its batteries during the day then wouldn't work at night it woudl be a pain.

One thing I disagree with is the idea that single mode is necessarily better than multimode. If you had an Olight M20 you could easily leave it on high mode and never change it. Every time you press the forward clickie you would get full power and the light could easily be used as a single mode light. But you have the option of using it as a multimode light if you trust yourself to put it in the right mode before returning it to its holster. There is nothing to say that you have to keep changing its mode - you can just leave the head alone if you aren't mindfull enough to change the mode back after playing with other modes.

 

[Lightraven]

Around 2002, I got shot by a Sim doing a dark building clear exercise because the Eveready-type flashlight they gave me sucked--way too dim. I was on the Surefire website the next night checking out the C2, M3 and M6.

Last October, I went into an active shooter Sim exercise and was ready to enter a dark doorway. I had my Nightcore Extreme (to save money in CR-123's) in my shirt pocket underneath my external body armor. With a Sim gun in my right hand, I could not dig the little thing out with my left. My adrenaline didn't help. Finally, another guy handed me his Inova T-3 and I drove on.

Then, there was the night moving target training in April. My X-300 detached from the rail during firing. I picked it up and used it as a Harries handheld and did OK. We examined it and discovered the rail grabbers had loosened very slightly. Because the crossbar is not as tall as it could be to fully engage the rail notch, even a hairline crack can make the light detach during recoil. I tightened the allen screws and was back in business. A former LASD SEB officer had the same problem with his X-300 during a night vehicle shoot.

I also had a series of light accidental discharges from my X-300 in my hide until I moved it off my gun belt onto my vest carrier. But the worst was handing my partner an aviation mini mag style light with a push/pull bezel with a red lens. He was impatient and wanted to check for footprints. It was set for red, but while he was looking at the dirt, we heard running up the road. "How do you turn this thing off?" he whispered. He pulled the bezel and BING! White light all over the place, people running in all directions. A mess.

There's a lot you can learn from formal training and instruction, direct field experience and vicarious experience of watching or reading others. A light that seems perfect on paper may have problems in real life. You can get something else, or just learn to work around the issues. Sometimes, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

 

[M@elstrom]

I like my Jet-IIIM - if the head is tight I get full-power when I press the forward clickie, if the head is loose I get minimum power

In your opinion... could this feature lead to premature wear of this switching method?

 

[Search]

One thing I disagree with is the idea that single mode is necessarily better than multimode. If you had an Olight M20 you could easily leave it on high mode and never change it. Every time you press the forward clickie you would get full power and the light could easily be used as a single mode light. But you have the option of using it as a multimode light if you trust yourself to put it in the right mode before returning it to its holster. There is nothing to say that you have to keep changing its mode - you can just leave the head alone if you aren't mindfull enough to change the mode back after playing with other modes.

If it changed modes by twisting the bezel or a selector ring then yes, it would be very much tactical and smart.

In some scenarios I've found that less light is more beneficial. When I need to flash and move in the darkness, it's hard when my night vision is severely deteriorated by 200+ lumens hitting a white wall to my left or right.

At the same time being in larger rooms would dictate a brighter light.

If you could manipulate your gun hand and light hand to change modes easily and safely, then it CAN be swapped in an ongoing situation.

If the light changed modes via cycling the tailcap, it won't survive a tactical situation because the user has lost a key feature in low-light.

Even if the light has a memory feature that remembered you stopped using it in high, if you use the momentary feature, you now have to cycle back to high. Add bullets or even the possibility and the user is planning for disaster by planning incorrectly.

 

[Crenshaw]

If it changed modes by twisting the bezel or a selector ring then yes, it would be very much tactical and smart.

In some scenarios I've found that less light is more beneficial. When I need to flash and move in the darkness, it's hard when my night vision is severely deteriorated by 200+ lumens hitting a white wall to my left or right.

At the same time being in larger rooms would dictate a brighter light.

If you could manipulate your gun hand and light hand to change modes easily and safely, then it CAN be swapped in an ongoing situation.

If the light changed modes via cycling the tailcap, it won't survive a tactical situation because the user has lost a key feature in low-light.

Even if the light has a memory feature that remembered you stopped using it in high, if you use the momentary feature, you now have to cycle back to high. Add bullets or even the possibility and the user is planning for disaster by planning incorrectly.

this is why i like the L1 (L2/L1/McGizmo PDs) UI. Lightly press for on, mash it all the way down for full.

Crenshaw

 

[Search]

Too add to that Crenshaw I'm looking forward to testing the AZ2.

The press lightly for flood and full for main beam is a good idea but I'm a little worried about it.

Even under stress if the user pressed harder than he wanted and got the full beam, it would still be light that can just as effectively be used. Whether it's flood or a little more throw.

I want to try that UI in Simunition training to get some kind of feel for it. Not the same stress, but those things hurt none the less and I don't like getting shot.

However, if they didn't build that UI to be ROCK SOLID it lost it's "Tactical" tag. Then again, isn't that how the A2 is now.

 

[KiwiMark]

In your opinion... could this feature lead to premature wear of this switching method?

Maybe it could on a cheaply made light - but I would be very surprised if the Jetbeam wore out in a hurry. For me it isn't a big issue because I don't use the Jet-IIIM as much as my smaller lights that fit in a jeans pocket. But when I go camping I never leave the Jet-IIIM at home - it has a warm tint LED which is pleasing on the eye and it has the lowest low of any of my lights.

 

[Monocrom]

The Gladius and Insight Typhoon H2X have all the features a tactical light should have...

Sadly, the Gladius and its Typhoon twin sister represent a dead end on the evolutionary tree of true tactical lights. The Gladius was just a bit too ahead of its time. With many tactical lights now easily pumping out over 200+ lumens, the stock Gladius made only 80 on 2xCR123 cells when it came out. Nowadays, even some single cell lights can beat that. You can improve things with a P4 upgrade, but the Gladius suffered from other issues.

It drained batteries. Sure it often took a few months to drain them completely, but some samples of the Gladius were worse than others. Living in NYC, I had a chance to actually handle a few Gladius models. The tailcaps were incredibly loose on all but one of them. Unless the light was locked out, the tailcap had a tendency to roll into another mode, and turn itself on in a holster. The grip-ring was too narrow, and being part of the light itself (instead of a seperate piece); your holster options were limited. The skeletonized Mod-U-lok holster was your best bet. Problem was, the holster itself wasn't that great.

The tailcap felt cheap. Almost an after-thought. In the unlikely event you damaged your Surefire tailcap, you could easily replace it with a new one (except for the M6 model). Damage the tailcap on the Gladius, and you had a headache getting a replacement.

I can tell you from experience that the low-battery indicator can get very annoying. Still, considering that you often had to refer to the manual just to swap out the cells; it's a good thing the light does have a low-battery indicator.

The automatic temperature control sounds great on paper, but imagine your light turning off or dimming in order to protect itself? That could backfire if you really need your light to maintain full brightness, in a given situation. An example of the Gladius being too smart for the user's own good.

I ended up buying that one Gladius model I found that had a tight tailcap. In truth, I bought it to help out an aquaintence who was having financial and legal problems. (The light was brand new, and I paid him full price for it). It sits unused, due to the issues mentioned above.

Olight's M20 Warrior fixes a lot of the issues mentioned above. It's not as smart as a Gladius, but I've noticed some remarkable similarities.

Night-Ops hasn't chosen to update the basic design of the Gladius. And Insight seems content to no longer be a leading contender of making tactical lights. (Either for itself or for Night-Ops). A look at Insight's current offerings, reminds me of several lights I've seen before... And not in a good way.

 

[KiwiMark]

If it changed modes by twisting the bezel or a selector ring then yes, it would be very much tactical and smart.

Yep - that is the way that the M20 works. You just loosen-tighten the head and you switch to another mode, leave the head alone and just use the tail switch makes it a simple on-off single mode light.

I wouldn't mind if it had a super low mode as well as its current low-med-hi-strobe, but you need a backup regardless and my backup to the M20 is my Jet-IIIM which has a really low minimum. In fact I really like these 2 lights together. They both run from 1 x 18650 or 2 x 16340 or 2 x CR123a - so if you have both then the batteries can be swapped between them if you have a light die and the spares for one are the spares for the other as well. My M20 has a nice bright R2 emitter, my Jet-IIIM has a Q3 warm emitter. The M20 has medium & strobe modes, the Jet-IIIM was a low minimum. Both have forward clickies. The Jet-IIIM can tailstand. Either is a great light and the other one is a good backup that can run from the same batteries. Between them there is not many situations where one or the other is the perfect tool for the job. I feel that when I need/want a tactical light I have a good one to use and a very capable backup that is similar, but different in a complimentary way. My tactical light is the Jet-IIIM + M20 Premium - 2 is always better than one!

If anyone out there only has one tactical light then you are at least one short. It would be as bad as only having one EDC. Funnily enough my EDC is a Jetbeam (Jet-I Pro) + Olight (Ti Infinitum) as well. The Fenix L0D on my keyring is just a backup to my EDC lights.

Imagine in a tactical situation your partner's light fails and you don't have a spare tactical light to hand over. Even if you are confident that your light is so good that it would never fail there is no good excuse for not having a spare on you. I think my 2 tactical lights have a really important feature for a situation where you need to hand one over to someone else so they can cover you - push the button and the light comes on. They may be multi level, but that is no reason why they can't be simple for anyone to use. I wouldn't even bother telling another person that the head can loosen, no need to distract them with unimportant facts.

 

[Search]

+1 on the having more than one.

I've tried my E1B in scenarios to see how well I could manipulate the two modes into something useful. Not productive but it can get you by. If I had more modes to cycle through it would be a pain that I couldn't deal with.

Was going to get a Serpa holster but I want an X300 too badly and decided to get a thumb strap. So now I will have three lights.

I would have liked to carry a backup with a single mode but that low mode is too valuable for general use such as searching a car.

If I had a MOLLE vest it would be much easier I would just keep my single-mode E2DL (With E1B tailcap so it's easy to hit) attached.

I had wanted to get the M20 for testing but it's too similar to my TK11/10. The biggest problem I have with them is how thick the bodies are. You can hold it like a cigar (Rogers/SureFire technique) but after a length of time it starts to hurt your fingers. Gloves would probably help but I'm not planning for that.

Because of that issue I have decided to get a Z2 and upgrade with a Malkoff. I need that cut out and combat grip to be comfortable with it. The M20 was just like my TK10 (which I find throws the same as my TK11 to my human eyes) as far as thickness so it was money I didn't need to spend.

To note, I just hope the M60s beam is similar to the TK10. Big, bright hotspot with all that blessed spill.

There is nothing like clearing a building with all that spill but still having such a bright hotpot for the larger rooms or outdoors.

 

[SureAddicted]

If it changed modes by twisting the bezel or a selector ring then yes, it would be very much tactical and smart.

I could not disagree with you more. If it requires two hands to operate it renders it useless for tac applications. You mentioned in previous posts that you trained with SWAT, so you should know exactly what the term " tactical" means. Also tac gear/lights are kept KISS, it makes sense as well. True tac lights have one output, if your using low it's not really a tac situation.

 

[Search]

I could not disagree with you more. If it requires two hands to operate it renders it useless for tac applications. You mentioned in previous posts that you trained with SWAT, so you should know exactly what the term " tactical" means. Also tac gear/lights are kept KISS, it makes sense as well. True tac lights have one output, if your using low it's not really a tac situation.

Multi-Mode can and cannot be "Tactical".

It depends on how it changed modes: Selector ring, Twisting of bezel, cycling through tailcap (which is the very un-tactical).

You are a patrolman armed with a Glock. Given I've been certified to use a rifle (AR type) and would have grabbed it by now, especially with the scenario but roll with it.

Lets say you do a felony stop on a car and have your TK11 on high and the subject splits real quick into a house.

You don't want the light on high because it's too bright for the confined space and you want to conserve some night vision and don't want to blind your team. You might not have the luxury or want to do this with a weapon mounted light on a rifle.

As you think the subject could cause harm to the people inside, there is no time to wait for SWAT or SRT to gear up and hit the house.

You have time to twist the bezel or ring before entering the house.

The whole time, that light remained tactical and you didn't put yourself or anyone in danger.

It doesn't have to be a felony stop or even a stop.

If you are in a high school (this is a scenario I was in recently) and were in a little classroom, and had the light on low because as you stacked to hit the room you reached down to put it on low to not blind your team, preparing to enter the hallway again to enter the library. I know the high school in town so will know what's next. You twist the bezel or ring to put it on high as the library is large and spaced out.

Still you had the time to do it.

Now if the light cycled modes through the tail-cap, I would hope someone threw it away and let you borrow one.

It has to be single mode when you're pressing the tailcap. It doesn't have to be overall single mode.

As long as you know when and when not to waste time and attention to do change modes, you aren't causing any problems.

 

[AbnInfantry]

True tac lights have one output, if your using low it's not really a tac situation.

So during night patrols in Vietnam when I crawled under a poncho (to prevent light revealing our position) to use a low output, red-filtered light to check a map, it wasn't "really a tac situation"? :thinking: Thanks for explaining that. Years later, my instructors at Ranger School taught the same technique, but what did they know about "tactical" stuff?

How about when mortar platoon leaders/sergeants use low output flashlights at night in conjunction with an M2 aiming circle or mortar gunners during the laying process? Does "tactical" on this board only apply to folks who wear or want to wear badges?

 

[Marduke]

It has to be single mode when you're pressing the tailcap. It doesn't have to be overall single mode.

Ding ding ding, we have {another} winner.

There is no moment of confusion or hurried two-handed operation with a multimode tac light.

It's no different than selecting a single mode light for the job. You choose your mode (or light) prior to a situation. If you choose a single mode light poorly, you are up a creek without a paddle. If you choose your mode poorly, you can take 2 seconds to correct it, and it doesn't require an extra trip back to the squad car to fish a totally different light out of the trunk.

 

[SureAddicted]

So during night patrols in Vietnam when I crawled under a poncho (to prevent light revealing our position) to use a low output, red-filtered light to check a map, it wasn't "really a tac situation"? :thinking: Thanks for explaining that. Years later, my instructors at Ranger School taught the same technique, but what did they know about "tactical" stuff?

How about when mortar platoon leaders/sergeants use low output flashlights at night in conjunction with an M2 aiming circle or mortar gunners during the laying process? Does "tactical" on this board only apply to folks who wear or want to wear badges?

A patrol isnt considered a tac situation. Using a low level light for reading maps etc is different from using a high output light on the end of your AR. Checking a map under low light I wouldn't really call "tactical" situation, then again tac methods differ from law endorcement to military. Most people on this board wont ever get into a tactical sitation. These days NVG is used as opposed to crawling under a poncho, red filtered flashlights are used, mainly to signal. Times have changed since you were in vietnam. I guess what I'm saying is that the methods that tac teams/SWAT use differs from Ranger School. Opinions and experiences will differ.
Apologies to the OP for going OT.

 

[Owen]

Think I'll stop posting on anything with "tactical" in it

 

[Owen]

likewise

 

[Lightraven]

And back to the argument of what is a tactical situation. You cannot agree on tactical flashlights if you can't agree what is a tactical situation and like I demonstrated on the other thread, there really is no good definition, because anything could happen at anytime.

Sure, after a bomb detonates or someone starts shooting, observers can say, "That was a tactical situation" with 20/20 hindsight. Or situations that are generally considered "tactical" for one reason or another without any shooting or explosions. I don't know about anyone else, but my job is not really tactical (the SWAT guys would certainly deny me that) but never safe.

I was just told yesterday that my supervisor (former SWAT team leader) was struck by a truck and nearly run over by the bad guy while chambering a round into his M-4 carbine. The fellow officer who told me that wondered outloud why a round wasn't chambered to begin with. I thought, "He probably didn't think it was a "tactical situation" until the truck hit him." That's the problem with my job. It's safe. . .until it isn't.

Airborne Infantry posted something I've said many times--the word 'tactical' to the Army (1992) means something totally different than what it means now to LE/civilians--more like 'stealth' or the sexier 'covert'.

Those who carry a gun in any capacity--even concealed carry permit--shouldn't bother with the word "tactical" but instead think in terms of "what works for me." After all, who else here is using IR illuminators?