Flashlight Stories

Hi Everyone

I just found this site. At last I have found a home. I thought I was the only person n the world that had a flashlight fetish. I called myself a flashlight nut. My parents thought I was crazy when I was little and asked for flashlights for Christmas. Now I found my brothers and sisters in arms and we even have a name...FLASH-A-HOLICS! Only thing is I don't WANNA be cured. If Lovin' flashlights is wrong - then I don't wanna be right!

I want to tell you all about two great flashlight stories. I always dreamed someday I could tell these around some campfire to a secret group of Falshlight lovers. I will tell them seperately and would love to hear YOUR flashlight stories, unless that's already in an archive and you don't feel like re-writting.

Sincerely,

Ken

Hi Ken,

I've been reading in here for while but decided to join up. We are not alone. Thank goodness. I look forward to hearing your stories.

Rev

Welcome Ken & Rev!

I think you'll find the Cafe a good place to get to know about flash-a-holics.

Someone is going to tell you to get a SureFire E2e-HA, and someone is going to tell you to get an ArcAAA.

Allow me to be the first!
"Get an E2e-HA and an ArcAAA."

Enjoy your time here!

Regards,

Al

Shucks! My browser messed up and I lost my Flashlight story! It was long and it's almost quitting time. I will re-write it tomorrow and post. I hope you will enjoy them. They are both true stories.

The first will be about using my Red-Filtered Minimag while Fliying a Cessna 152 at night!

The other is about how my wife would tease me about always needing another flashlight - until one day a Sam's Choice 2-AA saved our lives!

I am tired and about to go. I hope I left you all salivating over a few good stories. I promise to post at least one of them tomorrow before 6:00pm Eastern.

L8tr!

Hi Size15s,

Sorry for the cross-post. I will take your advice! Both are torches I would love to add to the collection

Thanks for the welcome Size15s. I don't have either one of those lights yet....but I have drooled over them before.

Rev

Hi Rev. Sorry I didn't see your post, my browser screwed up. We are outta here for the night! Tell ya the stories tomorrow!

Cool. We'll be waiting.

Rev

Get an Arc AAA, don't delay! Or rather, you need an Arc AAA. need

Welcome to the board. Don't worry about being cured, but hold on to your wallet tight. AAA crA na teG. tniopyelekreB.



-ybaaS

!htob eht teG

Maglite In Flight
-by Kenogo

In 1990 I enrolled in the flight program at Alabama Aviation & Technical College. I graduated cum laude with my commercial pilot certificate with single/multi engine Instrument and advanced ground instructor. I was gonna be a big shot pilot and make $250,000 a year! WRONG! I never made dollar one. I flew for free a few times and fell into computers which now pays the bills and BUYS FLASHLIGHTS...YEA!

Anyway, this one quarter I to make so many cross-country flights at night. They taught us about night vision, that is takes about 20 min in the dark to get your full night vision. You would use the ambient light from cities and the moon, whatever, to gave whether you were straight and level, or climbing, turning, descending, etc during flight. Also you needed it to watch for other planes!

The best light, they said, to use at night is red filtered light, so we all had red filtered Minimag 2-AA lights. The favorite Minimag sold to cops and pilots and soldiers and such is black. More on THAT later!

After my preflight I take off one night bound for some place I can't remember, but if I know me it was Panama City Beach Airport. It's beautiful there – you all should go. To the beach not the airport! So I am in flight on the way back, when the controller says, "Cessna 55266, turn right 135 degrees and climb to 6,000ft. Watch for towers on your right." Ah shoot I am thinking – I am gonna have to read the map and see if I am gonna be too close, but I don't think so. I did not expect this turn and it wasn't on my flight plan.

The cockpit is very dimly lit in red. All the instrument are backlit or have red bzel lights. Checkout any Microsoft Flight Simulator and set it for night flight to see what the cockpit light is like at night – it is realistic. If you use bright light inside the plane, it will reflect off the windows and everything, and you won't be able to see outside well. Not to mention you will have messed up your night vision. SO I can make out the map and grab it, and go for the Minimag in the side pocket of my flight bag. I grab it – and – DROP THE DARN THING. I could hear it thump on the floor but I could not see it. I reached around as best I could with one hand while trying to fly my new heading and altitude with the other. I couldn't find it!

The controller came back, "Cessna 55266 do you see the towers?" Well, I did not answer. What was I gonna say, "No, stupid me dropped my flashlight."? No, I would only admit that to a fellow flashaholic and then only reluctantly So now I have no choice but to turn on the dome light, just like the one in your car. I found the towers on the map, and they were well below me, and I flip off the dome light. I could barely see a thing! But I finally saw the flashing red beacons on the tower and reported that I now had the towers in sight and I would clear them no trouble.

So I am now flying around blinded, mad at myself for dropping the light, for buying a black flashlight, and for not having a SPARE!!!! So that's why my wife never complainded about me buying another flashlight. But it's everyone after THAT she doesn't get Until my next story that is!!!! Anyway, the flight home was uneventful besides that. I did not buy a another flashlight right away, but I got a lanyard that would fit around my neck so if I dropped it again, it would still be in reach.

Now the moral of the story is, you can never have too many backup flashlights. Tell your wives I said so! And TWO – unless you are a soldier in combat, a swat team member, you have some need to be inconspicuous, or you just have a love for black flashlights, you really should take Ken's advice and buy silver, gunmetal, chrome, reflective type flashlight – especially if you are REALLY gonna use them or need them fro a task, and not just for fun. That way if you drop it before you can turn it on, you may see light glinting off it and recover it! But you don't have to buy ugly ones, Ken never said that! Then again, ARE there any ugly flashlight? Naahhhh...

So for the cockpit, I now have a Silver Minimag 2AA with removable red filter and lanyard, and the back up is a Rayovac Swivel-light 2AA with red filter and has a clip so I can clip it to my shirt. I though it was ugly at first, but fell in love with it's functionality. The hypocrite in me still takes my BLACK Z2 everywhere I go, because it is my favorite, it's my baby, and I love it. But I think I need that Arc AAA, and I want a Streamlight for the collection…..

HOPE YOU ALL ENJOYED THE STORY! It is all true and happened around 1990 or 1991.

BTW - little clarification. When I dropped the Minimag, it was before I could turn it on! I never foudn it until I got ot of the plane after landing, and found it rolled behind the seat.

The other story I will try to tell tomorrow night!

Originally posted by KenOgo:

The other story I will try to tell tomorrow night![/QB]

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hey, where's the story? Waited all day yesterday to hear!

Sorry! I was out of work a few days. I will write it now and post it this afternoon!

Sam's Choice 2AA Saves My Bacon!

The company I was working for in about 1994 sent me to a school in Atlanta for some cell-modem training. They put me up in a nice hotel nearby, so I took my wife thinking we would turn it into a nice weekend. As usual, among the thing I packed, was my favorite torch at the time. It was a Sam's Choice 2AA – GREEN of course as you know by now how I feel about trying to find black flashlights in the dark Of course, my wife was at the height of her "Why do you always have to bring a flashlight everywhere we go?" mentality.

The training went smoothly and we had a good time. The next day we showered up and were going to check out, spend the day in Atlanta, and then maybe stay somewhere closer to where we like to hang out when we are there. We were about to leave the room, when the power fails. We open the curtains more to let some light in. I opened the door and step out into the hallway – and it was DARK! Man, you do not know how dark a long hotel hallway is until you are in one with out power. The only light coming in was at each end of the very long hallway, and only a little. All these people were looking out their doorways like scared little gophers.

Naturally my wife is freaked by the darkness, so I grabbed the very flashlight she was mocking the day before. I go to the stairwell – which you could not have seen in the dark, and as I get closer – I see a faint orange glow!

I open it and look down – FIRE! There is a fire down below us! It must be the cause of the power failure. Maybe the generator blew up or something. I descend a smokey flight of stairs with my torch on to see how things are bad and if we can escape. The fire seems to be way down, but you figure the lobby is on 1st, and the basement is below that. But maybe the fire has climbed a few flights already? I didn't think so, so I assess my chances – The fire is either still in the basement or we are screwed, and we were to high up to jump (about 6th floor if I remember right), with no other way to get out. So I run up and grab our bags and told my wife LET'S GO! Naturally she comes back with the wife reply I expected…"What if the fire is higher than the lobby and we can't reach the 1st floor?" I come back with the standard Army answer.."Well we can stay here and slow roast, jump to our death, or descend the stair well and hope for the best. The only SURE thing is if we stay here, we WILL die!"

I invite others to come with us to escape after I tell them what I saw… and all the flashlights-less Lemmings said they would rather stay and wait for help. Well, I watch action-films, and from my experience, all those people usually die. Not me – I am outta here.

I opened the stairwell door again and wife is clutching the back on my shirt and mumbling something about we are gonna die. I got the overnight bag in my left and the Sam's Choice torch in my right; we descend a flight at a time, the smell of smoke in the air. It is warm in the stairwell, and I feel like I am descending into Hell, what with the orange glow all flickering and stuff. It was a weird feeling. We make it al the way to the first floor one flight at a time. It is very bright and smokey but I still see no fire. Before stepping into the hallway, Ken has to go down and see what's what. Something in the basement is definitely burning, some machinery. Probably the power generator, but wouldn't that be outside? I don't know much about those things, and I have screwed around enough and the wife is holding the 1st floor door going "KEN WILL YOU PLEASE COME BACK UP HERE!!!!" I figure I have pushed my luck enough, so I come up with no argument!

Stepping out into the 1st floor hallway, there is no sign anything is wrong. We walk to the lobby and people are standing there on their cells, and reading by sunlight near the window and it is like nothing is happening. Just a little power-outage! I approach the guy at the front desk and say, "HEY! Do you know this joint is on fire???" Everyone turns to look at me. The man says, "Sir, all we know is that there is a power outage and there is no need to be alarmed.." I said, "Here is my key, check me out GOODBYE!" We walk outside and get in the car, freaked out that all this happened in under 10 minutes, what with the hotel staff acting like there is no fire in the basement! All of a sudden there are the sirens and a fire truck comes screaming into the parking lott. That Jerk! He knew the place was on fire. Maybe I was making more out of it than need be, but when there is a fire, I want to know about it. Suppose it spread and got out of control? What then? I forget the name of the place or I would tell you, but I know WHERE it is and I don't stay there anymore.

However, my wife NEVER teases me about having a flashlight with me all the time after that. She knows without it, we could not have seen anything in the hallway, and what a potential disaster that could have been. Infact, she now REMINDS me to take my light with me when we go places AND she even has her own Surefire 6P-GM with nylon holster in her car. She recently showed it to her family as though it were a diamond or something! She said that I only give light of this quality to people I really love. LOL!

Hope you enjoyed that one, it's all true.

Outstanding!!
We all seem to have a love and facination for our little torchies, but deep down inside there is a need that our tools fulfill and I think your story illistrates one of the prime reasons we all carry.

KenOgo: Wonderful story!

webley: Well stated!

I originally posted this using "Uncle" instead of "father" for personal reasons. Here it is as it actually happened.

The Arc AAA Le proves its effectiveness in a difficult situation:

When I bought two ARC AAA Le's I did it mainly out of curiosity, assuming that I wouldn't have any real use for a mini LED since I EDC at least two brighter lights..

I was suddenly called to Miami because my father was dying and the family wanted to be at his side. I had the ARC on my keychain and I had pretty much forgotten about it until things began to happen very quickly.

NOTE: Some Flashaholics may find this next part a bit distasteful, so they might want to skip the following paragraphs.

My father had started accumulating large amounts of a white frothy discharge in his mouth, which the nurse was constantly having to remove through suction and paper wipes. She was having trouble seeing accurately so I used my AAA to help her. It was so small that I could easily maneuver it out of her way, and at that range it was exceptionally bright. We did this several times over the next two or three hours. From time to time we used the ARC to confirm whether his eyes were slightly open. At one point the nurse dropped something and it rolled under the bed, where it was hard to see despite the bright room lighting. The ARC's bright beam quickly found it. I'll spare everyone any further details.

Later, looking for our rental car in the surprisingly dark section of the hospital parking lot, there were two cars that looked identical. The ARC quickly confirmed which was ours. Of course I had brighter lights with me but by this time I wanted to see just how useful this flashlight could be. Back at the house I slept in the living room, and the ARC proved to be a perfect nighttime bathroom-finding light and I found it easy to adjust the brightness and diameter of the beam using my thumb and first finger.

After my father died we were looking for one of his CD's which was of special importance to the family. He had most of his CD's piled toward the back of a crowded closet that also contained the electronic components of his sound system. The closet lamp provided poor light, which I supplemented with the ARC. We found the disc.

There were many more times when the ARC proved its merit, and despite frequent and fairly heavy use over eight days it never noticeably dimmed. All this from a tiny keychain light!

I have a large flashlight collection, including the M6 and several other Surefires, and they are certainly very fine lights; but this sad week showed very clearly that of all my lights, the most useful and versatile, and in certain ways possibly the best, was that lovely little AAA Le'

It is truly "The Indispensable Flashlight".

Best regards,
Brightnorm

Top of the first post in this thread.
There is more 10X usage during that trip, but I can only write so much at one sitting. I'll try to finish it when possible.

Thanks Webley & brightnorm.

Brightnorm - Gosh I am VERY sorry to hear about your Dad. However, that was a great (but sad) story because you actually helped your Dad and the nurse with your Arc AAA F/L. That was a tremendously solemn use of your light. I don't know if I even HAVE the right words for that story. Sounds like it was a good thing you had it with you though! Again, very sorry to hear that about your Dad.