What is the "beacon" mode on quarks used for?

I was testing it out, and it just gave out four bright flashes and one bright flash with declining brightness. Anyone know what it's used for?

COAST said:

I was testing it out, and it just gave out four bright flashes and one bright flash with declining brightness. Anyone know what it's used for?

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You didn't leave it on long enough. It flashes once every ~10 seconds. It can be used as a locator or as a signal to others (aka beacon)

COAST said:

I was testing it out, and it just gave out four bright flashes and one bright flash with declining brightness. Anyone know what it's used for?

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You are lacking in patience , wait 11 seconds and you will see another flash.

the name is rather self explanatory don't ya think? you use it as a beacon.

hint: leave it on longer, it's more than just five flashes.

If you have a young child or grandchild, turn on the beacon, put it in your shirt pocket, and just wait. It won't take very long for them to notice there's something that blinks very slowly in your pocket and if you do it right, you can string them along for hours. It beats watching "Cars" 37 times :mecry:

As others have said, it keeps flashing indefinitely, about once every 10 seconds.

One use is to put it inside your tent at night if you're out backpacking or camping or whatever, if you need to wander away from your campsite at night. The flash will light up your whole tent every once and a while and can help you find your way back.

To me, alot of these modes are pretty much useless. I like having the option of a strobe, and maybe one more blinking mode. Beacon, and SOS is pointless to me.

Beacon is great if you're on a 'big lake' or waterway and after fishing (it's always dark) you start home and need to find camp. Where I fish in the north there are no other cottages or such to use as landmarks.
Beats a strobe in my opinion.

We need a sticky for these threads.
Savumaki gave the perfect example, these modes may require outside-of-the-box thinking but they ARE useful. The light becomes more than a flashlight. Position marker, distress call, hi-visibility warning light. All useful modes to some users, not all.
I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
The manufacturers are getting the message and hiding these functions out of the main interface but still keeping them accessible if needed.

travelinman said:

... It beats watching "Cars" 37 times :mecry:

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Man... I have the same problem over here, with "Cars" and "Bolt, the Super Dog".

:naughty:

Sorry for the off topic...

Well maybe not totally useless. I like the programming feature on my quark, so I get only the modes I want.

kyhunter1 said:

To me, alot of these modes are pretty much useless. I like having the option of a strobe, and maybe one more blinking mode. Beacon, and SOS is pointless to me.

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You got me thinking now, maybe beacon is not so bad afterall.

savumaki said:

Beacon is great if you're on a 'big lake' or waterway and after fishing (it's always dark) you start home and need to find camp. Where I fish in the north there are no other cottages or such to use as landmarks.
Beats a strobe in my opinion.

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moving more units

In my opinion, I think the beacon doesn't flash quite often enough to be easily pinpointed, I'd prefer something like 5-7 seconds.

Ditto Defloyd. The Beacn mode is too slow for my taste and uss.

My other lights with such a mode are all in the 4-5 sec. range. This seems to be more of a "locator" mode at 10 seconds. For this purpose I wish it was at the low level instead of medium.

Geoff

This is my biggest gripe with the Quark series. It simply is not useful TO ME. On the other hand, for example, a one flash per second (or thereabouts) on the HDS lights are extremely useful and the battery still lasts forever.

John F

Out of curiosity, does SOS flash SOS in morse code?

actually it flashes a giant "SOS" in the sky like batman.
JK, morse code i believe.

BeeEm said:

Out of curiosity, does SOS flash SOS in morse code?

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It flashes this sequence (Record with a light sensor):

Yup, SOS in Morse Code = ... --- ... (three short, three long, three short)