Looking to to buy a Surefire (or equivalent reliability) incan.

BirdofPrey

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Ok, the wife and I are mild preppers. I got to thinking about the fact that every light I own is LED. Speculation is that if an EMP ever occurs, its possible that LED lights will go out with them. SO, I figured that I'd buy two reliable lights that are incan. As much as I don't like Surefire, I accept that they are likely one of the most reliable lights out there. So I was thinking maybe buy two of them and a couple of extra bulbs. Id be alright with another brand so long as they are reliable as well and bright.

Problem for me is that I know very little about incan lights. Is Surefire the way to go and if so, where is the best place to buy a couple of them without spending a small fortune. These will never get used unless the unthinkable happens so I'm not looking to break the bank buying them.
 

ampdude

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Saying you don't like Surefire's, you're starting out on the wrong foot with me ;)

It's not hard to pick up a couple 6P's or G2's on Ebay. Surefire hasn't discontinued those lights yet, they are still being made. But I believe they are the only incans Surefire still makes.

Ever heard of Maglite? They are high quality American made lights. There's also a ton of incan lights still out there down to grocery store 2D bargain lights at the dollar store.

You've realized what a lot of preppers are not aware of, that their LED lights may become useless in a real SHTF situation either worldwide or localized.

I prefer incans over LED's for other reasons, but EMP resistance, that's a hidden bonus.
 
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Marten

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Check out CPF Marketplace.
There is a seller offering new 9P's...
 

ampdude

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Yea, the 9P is a great light. It can use a couple of rechargeable P17500's for free lumens and has double O-rings on the tail for extra water resistance.

I've always preferred the C3 for my own use, but the 9P is great.
 

Helmut.G

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Best place to buy Surefire incan? ebay for me if you don't mind a used light.

I would recommend you to look at the G2 (or G3 if you want to run rechargeables). I love the nitrolon 'plastic', it feels great and is extremely durable.
The yellow G2 is more visible than most other flashlights.

Edit: another thing since you are looking to spend little money and not actually use the light(s) unless tSHTF: there are cheap incan replacement bulbs for surefire lights available from some (mainly asian) sources. no, they won't be as bright and won't have a beautiful surefire beam, but they work.
 
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cland72

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Pick up a Surefire G2 and a couple extra P60 lamps. You can find them dirt cheap on eBay.

Or, if you want the ability to run rechargeables (assuming they work after the EMP in your scenario) you can find a G3/9P or other 9 volt Surefire and run two 17500 batteries with a P90 lamp.
 

Kestrel

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Hello BirdOfPrey,

I've renamed your thread title to a small degree, true "where-to-buy" threads are discouraged here in the discussion subforums because of the issues related to promotional aspects.

I do think that you are thinking along reasonable lines; My stash includes a half-dozen of the now-rare 15 lumen SureFire P30 lamp assemblies.

My reasoning is that these 3 volt lamp assemblies are compatible with 2xAA (in 9P's etc) as well as single CR123's. :)

It would be a challenge to operate higher voltage lamp assemblies for extended periods of time without having matched-set CR123's - which would get increasingly difficult to come by in a "long emergency".
 

Helmut.G

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

It would be a challenge to operate higher voltage lamp assemblies for extended periods of time without having matched-set CR123's - which would get increasingly difficult to come by in a "long emergency".
With a couple of A14/AN14 extenders plus a G3, 9P, C3 etc. and some newsprint to wrap the batteries in, you get any count of AAs you like.
The metal sleeves in the AN14s don't make contact with each other if you stack them, when I experimented with that I used rings bent out of a bit of copper wire.

5q74.jpg

l19k.jpg
 

Admiralgrey

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Be careful! You might fall in love and open the floodgates for a new incan collection!

As the last couple posts have addressed, reliability in this instance is definitely related to feed-ability. So another plug for Maglites (besides being completely disassemble-able and bombproof.)
 

Helmut.G

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

So another plug for Maglites (besides being completely disassemble-able and bombproof.)
Mags have a relatively complicated switch to fail.
Surefire twisty lights are hardly more than a metal tube and a bulb.

;)
 

carrot

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Surefire is honestly a very good choice as they are still the original #1 choice in high powered incan. The G2 is a totally bomber light and still available everywhere at outstanding prices. B&H has them for $41.30 right now.

However, you should also consider offerings from various dive light / heavy industry manufacturers, who are still making and selling incandescent lights. They aren't constructed as bomber as Surefire (I still keep Surefires around all over the place) but if you are looking for lights that are easy to feed (alkaline batteries) you can get some really great lights from Underwater Kinetics, Princeton Tec, Streamlight and the like. The flashlights with 6V and up (4 alkalines) will have very good performance.

BrightGuy has an awesome selection of lights and their flashlight finder is second to none. You can see a whole slew of flashlights that are incandescent over there.

http://www.brightguy.com/find/what[0]=flashlights&bulb_type[0]=Incandescent/
 

scout24

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

Kestrel- Wise plan on the P30's. I keep MN01's for the same reason. (Single-cell compatability) Add a dummy cell and they run great in my preferred E2e's. :thumbsup:
 

ampdude

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Re: Best place to buy a Surefire (or equivelent reliability) incan.

I have a lot of Maglites. There's really no reason not to have some AA Minimags and Some D and C cell lights, though I realized a long time ago that any single cell lithium lamp would run off of 2AA's really well. I have a lot of 2, 3, and 4 cell Mag (and assorted) potted bulbs that people have dumped for LED's. I have some D to 2AA adapters that work really good for the D cells lights, since I don't really use D or C cells anymore.
 

yellow

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You want to get "another" light "system" for the chance of an EXTREME DISASTER (which might make whatever electronics non functional - even led lights)?
:rolleyes:
And then Your "choice" are lights that go through batteries in just a few mins?
:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

within 2 weeks all these "high power lights"-batteries (+ rechargeables) all over the world will be gone and we all will change to flame torches ...
... stock up on good methods to start a fire ...
... and get torches
(... and stock up on loooooong runtime, low output lights)
 

ampdude

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You want to get "another" light "system" for the chance of an EXTREME DISASTER (which might make whatever electronics non functional - even led lights)?
:rolleyes:
And then Your "choice" are lights that go through batteries in just a few mins?
:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

within 2 weeks all these "high power lights"-batteries (+ rechargeables) all over the world will be gone and we all will change to flame torches ...
... stock up on good methods to start a fire ...
... and get torches
(... and stock up on loooooong runtime, low output lights)

I think EMP damage from warfare would be more localized, but there are many things that could cause worldwide EMP blasts, not just nuclear/neutron/EMP weapons. There is the possibility of a worldwide natural disaster that originates from space, such as supernovae, solar flares, or other sorts of deep space radiation. It's happened many times before and there was a large solar flare event that happened back in 1859 that burned out much of the primitive electronics of the time.

"Flashlights that go through batteries in a few minutes and all batteries worldwide are gonna be dead in two weeks", huh? I think you're being really melodramatic and entirely unrealistic.

I agree it's definitely not a bad idea to have fire starters on hand like lighters and matches. Nothing wrong with candles either. They've worked as a light source since they were invented as have oil lamps and incans.

You could store electronics in a faraday cage, like a microwave, but they won't be very useful if you have to keep them in there during an ongoing EMP event, or if you are using them while another one hits. I think it would have to be a very strong event to effect all electronics worldwide.
 
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BirdofPrey

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You want to get "another" light "system" for the chance of an EXTREME DISASTER (which might make whatever electronics non functional - even led lights)?
:rolleyes:
And then Your "choice" are lights that go through batteries in just a few mins?
:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

within 2 weeks all these "high power lights"-batteries (+ rechargeables) all over the world will be gone and we all will change to flame torches ...
... stock up on good methods to start a fire ...
... and get torches
(... and stock up on loooooong runtime, low output lights)

Wow, not often I run into someone with such arrogance and sarcasm in a post.

I'm well versed on fire starting. I have plenty of low power and DIM incandescent lights that will run for a respectable amount of time.

What I need and want now is a light with decent output that can play with my lower level LEDs.

If you aren't planning to reply with something that helps with my question (since you arrogantly assume the other matters are not handled by me already), then why reply at all?

To everyone else, thanks for the responses. Taking everything in.

Sent from my Note 10.1 somewhere deep in a hidden lair.
 

ampdude

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My of my favorite incan lamps that runs off of lithium cells is the Surefire MN02. It'll run around 3 hours off of a couple of lithium cells and put out a respectable output. The MN02 will put out around 25 lumens at the midrange of its battery life and around 60 lumens on fresh batteries. That's on par with lower level LED lights and with the extra high quality xenon output that incans provide, so you'll be able to see better with it, especially outdoors. And again you can get some respectable runtimes off of simple 2AA Maglites and they are cheap! I recommend stocking up on batteries occasionally. I like to pick up large packs of AA cells (of decent quality makers like Duracell, Energizer, or Rayovac) when they are on sale and I like to buy the 72 packs of Surefire CR123A's.
 

BirdofPrey

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My of my favorite incan lamps that runs off of lithium cells is the Surefire MN02. It'll run around 3 hours off of a couple of lithium cells and put out a respectable output. The MN02 will put out around 25 lumens at the midrange of its battery life and around 60 lumens on fresh batteries. That's on par with lower level LED lights and with the extra high quality xenon output that incans provide, so you'll be able to see better with it, especially outdoors. And again you can get some respectable runtimes off of simple 2AA Maglites and they are cheap! I recommend stocking up on batteries occasionally. I like to pick up large packs of AA cells (of decent quality makers like Duracell, Energizer, or Rayovac) when they are on sale and I like to buy the 72 packs of Surefire CR123A's.

Thanks for the info. I'm basically going to go onto the computer tomorrow and start digging up the lights discussed in this thread. I'll work from prices and what not there.

I actually already placed a cheap 18650 charger and LED flashlight into a metal lock box that I had laying around in the garage. That is on top of a chunk of foam rubber. This should act as a Faraday cage.

I've got another box of larger size that I intend to put a few of my less often used 18650s in with a portable solar charger.

I will occasionally pull the batteries and cycle them to keep them in shape.

Nothing wrong with being prepared for the possible regardless of how unlikely it may be.

That said, nothing says the world comes to an end with a single EMP over CONUS.

Anyone that says it's foolish to prepare has not studied their history. Human beings have an uncanny knack for nearly wiping themselves out and then rebuilding.

Sent from my ridiculously large Galaxy Note 2.
 

ampdude

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I don't know where you live, but around here it's too cold outside a lot of the year to depend on lithium rechargeables. The chemistry is just not up to it. Lithium primaries operate fine in the cold, but rechargeables seem to have a real problem with it. I'm not aware of any lithium rechargeable chemisty that operates well in the cold. I recall a thread awhile back of a guy who was using them in his bike light in the fall and kept having failures with them in 40 degree weather. And the ones with protection circuits are going to be a lot safer, but even more dodgy, since we're talking about cold and EMP's.

Rechargeable lithium ion cells are a lot of fun and the best option for everyday use, but for SHTF I think they are a poor choice, I'd put my faith in lithium primaries CR123A/AA, Alkalines, and for rechargeable I'd go with NiCd, and NiMh though NiMh won't last nearly as long as NiCd. I have a rechargeable electric shaver I use everyday that I got as a birthday present back in 2000 (or was it 98, or 99'?) that still works great on the original NiCd batteries. I actually might even look into an Alkaline recharger, I remember I had one of those back in the late 90's and early 2000's, whatever happened to those?

They actually used to make rechargeable Alkaline cells back in the day, but this one was meant to recharge single use alkaline cells. As I recall it worked pretty well. I think it was called the "Wave Charger", but I can't find any info on it online. Not surprising. They've got everyone convinced at this point that alkalines are "non-rechargeable". You'd think they wouldn't have to bother labeling them that way anymore, but they still do.
 
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