js
Flashlight Enthusiast
THE AVIATRIX
As many of you may know, I'm passionate about the SureFire A2; it's not that I "like it" or "appreciate it", I LOVE it. The A2 is a sacred artifact, a holy item, an object of reverence. You know how some people make posts like "If you could have your dream light, what would it be?" and people say what existing light their dream light would sort of be like, except how it would be different in this or that respect, and better in these ways, and so on? Well, the SF A2 comes so close already to being my dream light that it's kind of scary, really. Not that it's perfect, because it's not, but for me, it's very close.
So, you can understand why I'm kind of a purist about the light. I've thought a few times about using rechargeable 123's in my A2, but the sticking point has always been the LED ring. I didn't want to burn out the ring on my A2 by further over-driving an already over-driven set of LED's. Nor did I want to modify the ring away from stock configuration. I certainly could have swapped in higher value resistors, and "better" LED's—or had someone I trust do this—but I just didn't want to disrupt the integrity of the original, stock, as delivered light. I know people complain about the "angry blue" of the white LED beam, or the textured-ness of the yellow-green or red A2 rings, and so on, but for me, these concerns were always too minor to warrant permanently altering my A2 away from the stock configuration I loved so much. Kind of a "if it's not broken, don't fix it" attitude, which you might think to be a rather strange one for a person who is numbered among the CPF homemade/modified lights people. But if you look at all my projects, you will see that I'm all for drop-in mods, extra options, replacement battery packs, replacement lamp assemblies, and so on. If I can have something additional, I'm all for it! This allows me to pursue perfection and preserve the original stock configuration undisturbed. It allows me to have my cake and eat it, in other words.
This is why I have looked into getting spare SureFire LED rings on more than one occasion in the past couple years. If I had an extra LED ring, I would have no qualms about modding it, or having it modded. But, every time, the answer was the same: there was no way to get an A2 LED ring from SureFire, except as a repair or replacement of a broken one. I day-dreamed about various schemes where I would lie to them and tell them it stopped working and I couldn't fix it, so I "threw it out" LOL! And see if they wouldn't send me a replacement ring, but ultimately, I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Enter our hero!
Atomic Chicken has answered all my A2 extras, mods, and add-on desires, even ones I didn't know I had, with his introduction of the Aviatrix—a line of drop in replacement SF A2 LED rings with or without smart circuitry, built to the highest quality possible, and offered at a price that will make you want one of these even if you don't currently have an A2.
For more detailed information on these rings, and what options are available and so on, please see Bakwo's threads:
Announcing: The Aviatrix! Fantastic new modification for Surefire A2 Aviators!
urefire A2 Add-on... Would you buy it? **UPDATE - Product Launch Announced!!**
Aviatrix Update - All buyers and interested members please read!
But for now, I will summarize and say that there are two main types of Aviatrices: uC and LED-only. The uC rings have circuitry in them which allows you to chose whether or not you have one LED, or all three, and also to choose among three emergency type modes, one of which sends an SOS signal. So when ordering a uC ring, you specify what the single LED will be, which for mine, is red, then you specify what the other two will be, which on mine is white. For the LED only rings, obviously, you just specify what LED's you want, as all will come on when the ring is powered. But note right away that ALL AVIATRIX RINGS CAN BE USED WITH Li-ion R123's or with primaries.
Anyway, getting back to the configurations, the RED/WHITE ring I have, for example, allows me to run just the single red LED when I want to preserve my night vision, and have very low level illumination, and the two white LED's allow me to have a normal low-level to my A2, just like a stock A2. One could also choose to have three white LED's, and then have 1 on, or all 3. Bawko himself is hot for the GREEN/WHITE rings, and I think I will also get a YELLOW-GREEN/WHITE ring, as well as a white LED-only ring. There are many possibilities, and I am sure that Bawko will not rest an his laurels and that even more sophistication and options will show up in the Aviatrix line.
The user interface is simple and effective: if you turn on the LED portion of the A2 for less than one second (then turn off), then the next time you turn on, you will be in the other mode. So you go from 1, to 1+2, then back to 1, and so on. Do this five times in a row, and you drop into the emergency/advanced modes. There are three of these, and you cycle through them in the normal way, but when you exit the third one, you go back to the 1+2 regular mode, and it will take another five "clicks" to get back to the advanced modes.
A note about that: the activation pulse which tells the uC to changes modes really is not a "click" because while the turn on must be less than 1 second it must also be longer than 60 miliseconds or it won't count. This is a major blessing and a really smart feature, because a quick accidental activation of your LED's will not knock you out of your chosen mode. Very nice. It means you pretty much have to deliberately choose to change modes once you get the hang of using the Aviatrix.
Let me back up, however, as I am getting ahead of myself.
My Aviatrix order arrived in a padded envelope. Inside was a pill bottle protecting the precious aviatrix rings: one red LED-only ring, and one RED/WHITE ring. The bottle protecting the rings rid me of any fears I might have had regarding damage or alteration or misalignment during shipping. Thank you Bawko! I opened the bottle and pulled forth two of the most beautiful pieces of work I have ever seen, each in its own bag, with padding. Here was flawless work, perfection worthy of SureFire itself. I was especially pleased with the spring contacts, as those are crucial, precision pieces of hardware, but Bawko's spring contacts look very nice indeed and seem to perform very well. Here is a top view of two rings. On the left is my red LED-only Aviatrix ring, and on the right is the stock SF ring (white) that came with my A2. The Aviatrix spring contacts are shorter, but actually have a slightly longer travel above the plane of the circuit board.
And here is a side view.
Note that the Aviatrix LED's are positioned slightly farther forward into the reflector holes than the stock LED's. Bawko tells me that this is because some of the dies of the various color LED's he is using were lower, and thus the lens needed to sit forward more in order for those LED's to work properly. This way, all rings are jigged up the same and treated the same. So far, I have not noticed much of a difference in either LED or incan beams due to this more forward LED position, although it may possibly be the case that there is just a bit more ringiness to the corona of the incan beam. I will report more on this after I've had more time to live with these rings and my A2-A.
The standard Aviatrix ring is a lot more sophistacted than the stock ring, and has a lot more circuitry on it:
Frankly, I'm amazed that Bawko managed to fit it all in the available space, but fit it all in he did, and lucky we all are for it!
OK. So, many of you will be taking off your SF A2 head or MA02 lamp, or LED ring for the first time, and some of you may be tempted to clean the inside of the lens, or lube up the contacts with some super-duper special corrosion resistant pro-brown-ex-ox-it or something. Let me give you a piece of advice:
Don't.
All of the contacts on the SF A2 are plated and are already corrosion resistant. A simple swipe with a Q-tip is all that is needed to clean them. Any attempt to clean the inside of the lens could end up making things worse than when you started. I'm deadly serious here. I can remember at least half a dozen cases posted here on CPF where people wanted to do something special and good for their SF lights, or remove some micro-scopic piece of dust from the lens, and ended up permanently damaging or disfiguring their lights.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
On the other hand, it IS a good idea to remove pocket lint and globs of grease and dust and anything else that might end up falling down inside the holes of your SF A2 head into the lens/reflector area. Run a Q-tip around the threads of both the head and body, or a cotton pipe cleaner, just to remove stuff that could fall off and go into the holes you are going to open up by removing things. Also, make sure your Aviatrix ring is clean, free of any drool or food particles that may have fallen from your gaping mouth as you admired it when first removing it from the package. Make sure your work surface is clean, and that your wife is not spraying hair spray or craft adhesive nearby, and so on.
So. Remove the head of your A2 by turning it off just like you'd expect. Ensure that the light is facing lens downward, at least partly, as otherwise the lamp could just fall out on its own and end up broken or dirty. Which reminds me: DON'T TOUCH THE GLASS ENVELOPE OF THE INCAN LAMP. If you do, clean with isopropyl alcohol and let dry for a few minutes before re-inserting it. I like to remove the lamp by grabbing the small ring with my fingernails and lifting straight out. I then just set it carefully on my work surface, glass end facing up at about a 45 degree angle.
After this, you will see the LED ring held in place by three screws. A #00 philips screw driver is what is normally needed, although if I remember correctly the very first A2's had slotted screws. In any case, be careful and take things slowly. It's easy for a screw driver tip to slip off and damage things. A pair of small tweezers is very useful for grabbing the tiny screws once they are fully unscrewed. I would do one screw at a time, and I would ensure that the head was tilted somewhat, with the screw to be removed at the bottom so that if it gets away from you and falls it will not fall into the lamp hole.
Once you have removed all three screws, you should be able to pull the ring out with tweezers, or simply invert it carefully into the palm of your hand, letting gravity pull the stock ring out.
Again, treat the ring with care, as it's fairly delicate: it doesn't take much to knock off a surface mount resistor, or snag a spring contact, or bend the LED lead wires or something.
For installation of your Aviatrix, simply line up the holes in the board with the screw holes and drop it gently into place, or use your tweezers to slowly lower it in—either way. Next, put the screws into their holes, and just turn them in a few turns—just enough to hold them in place, and make sure they are not cross threaded.
DO NOT WORRY IF THE HOLES IN THE RING ARE OFF CENTER SLIGHTLY FROM THE SCREW SHANKS.
When you tighten things down, the screw heads will pull things gently into alignment. So, to that end, turn the scews down, but don't do just one all the way tight, then move on to the next one. Rather, turn one down until it is almost touching, then move on and do the next one the same way, then the third one. Then turn the first one down another turn, so that it is just barely tight, then do the same to the other two. Then, snug each one down.
THERE IS NO NEED TO OVER-TIGHTEN THE SCREWS!
The pressure from two fingers turning at the narrowest part of the screw driver is plenty. Snug them down, but don't put much muscle into it! Here is what you will end up with:
Note that there are only two spring contacts on the standard (smart) Aviatrix rings to create the needed space for all that cool circuitry. This does not cause any problems for either the LED's or the incan lamp.
And speaking of that, remember to reinsert the incan lamp, then screw on the head hand tight. It's hard to over-tighten the head when using just your hands, so don't be shy about turning it on, but on the other hand, don't feel you are in some kind of muscle contest. Tighten it down good and tight by hand and that's good enough.
TA-DA!
You now have the most sophisticated flashlight on the planet: an A2-A.
Bow four times towards Bawko's home town in obeisance to his genius! Thank you Bawko, you nuclear powered chicken! :bow: :bow: :bow:
I'm very impressed with the Aviatrix rings. The quality of the work is second to none, even SureFire, and they allow a pretty damn sophisticated light to be even MORE sophisticated.
Bawko, you are a tribute to CPF ingenuity and integrity. The Aviatrix is a TRIUMPH.
I don't have beam shots, and as many pictures and results as I would like, but I felt that it would be better to get a review posted now, early on, and we can all add to this thread as buyers get their Aviatrices and experience the joys of owning an A2-A. For now, this is what I have, but I will be back with more reports, beam shots, thoughts, bad jokes at Bill Waites' expense and maybe pictures of Kate Beckinsale.
Until then, happy Aviatrixing people! And feel free to ask me any questions or post appropriate stuff to this thread.
As many of you may know, I'm passionate about the SureFire A2; it's not that I "like it" or "appreciate it", I LOVE it. The A2 is a sacred artifact, a holy item, an object of reverence. You know how some people make posts like "If you could have your dream light, what would it be?" and people say what existing light their dream light would sort of be like, except how it would be different in this or that respect, and better in these ways, and so on? Well, the SF A2 comes so close already to being my dream light that it's kind of scary, really. Not that it's perfect, because it's not, but for me, it's very close.
So, you can understand why I'm kind of a purist about the light. I've thought a few times about using rechargeable 123's in my A2, but the sticking point has always been the LED ring. I didn't want to burn out the ring on my A2 by further over-driving an already over-driven set of LED's. Nor did I want to modify the ring away from stock configuration. I certainly could have swapped in higher value resistors, and "better" LED's—or had someone I trust do this—but I just didn't want to disrupt the integrity of the original, stock, as delivered light. I know people complain about the "angry blue" of the white LED beam, or the textured-ness of the yellow-green or red A2 rings, and so on, but for me, these concerns were always too minor to warrant permanently altering my A2 away from the stock configuration I loved so much. Kind of a "if it's not broken, don't fix it" attitude, which you might think to be a rather strange one for a person who is numbered among the CPF homemade/modified lights people. But if you look at all my projects, you will see that I'm all for drop-in mods, extra options, replacement battery packs, replacement lamp assemblies, and so on. If I can have something additional, I'm all for it! This allows me to pursue perfection and preserve the original stock configuration undisturbed. It allows me to have my cake and eat it, in other words.
This is why I have looked into getting spare SureFire LED rings on more than one occasion in the past couple years. If I had an extra LED ring, I would have no qualms about modding it, or having it modded. But, every time, the answer was the same: there was no way to get an A2 LED ring from SureFire, except as a repair or replacement of a broken one. I day-dreamed about various schemes where I would lie to them and tell them it stopped working and I couldn't fix it, so I "threw it out" LOL! And see if they wouldn't send me a replacement ring, but ultimately, I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Enter our hero!
Atomic Chicken has answered all my A2 extras, mods, and add-on desires, even ones I didn't know I had, with his introduction of the Aviatrix—a line of drop in replacement SF A2 LED rings with or without smart circuitry, built to the highest quality possible, and offered at a price that will make you want one of these even if you don't currently have an A2.
For more detailed information on these rings, and what options are available and so on, please see Bakwo's threads:
Announcing: The Aviatrix! Fantastic new modification for Surefire A2 Aviators!
urefire A2 Add-on... Would you buy it? **UPDATE - Product Launch Announced!!**
Aviatrix Update - All buyers and interested members please read!
But for now, I will summarize and say that there are two main types of Aviatrices: uC and LED-only. The uC rings have circuitry in them which allows you to chose whether or not you have one LED, or all three, and also to choose among three emergency type modes, one of which sends an SOS signal. So when ordering a uC ring, you specify what the single LED will be, which for mine, is red, then you specify what the other two will be, which on mine is white. For the LED only rings, obviously, you just specify what LED's you want, as all will come on when the ring is powered. But note right away that ALL AVIATRIX RINGS CAN BE USED WITH Li-ion R123's or with primaries.
Anyway, getting back to the configurations, the RED/WHITE ring I have, for example, allows me to run just the single red LED when I want to preserve my night vision, and have very low level illumination, and the two white LED's allow me to have a normal low-level to my A2, just like a stock A2. One could also choose to have three white LED's, and then have 1 on, or all 3. Bawko himself is hot for the GREEN/WHITE rings, and I think I will also get a YELLOW-GREEN/WHITE ring, as well as a white LED-only ring. There are many possibilities, and I am sure that Bawko will not rest an his laurels and that even more sophistication and options will show up in the Aviatrix line.
The user interface is simple and effective: if you turn on the LED portion of the A2 for less than one second (then turn off), then the next time you turn on, you will be in the other mode. So you go from 1, to 1+2, then back to 1, and so on. Do this five times in a row, and you drop into the emergency/advanced modes. There are three of these, and you cycle through them in the normal way, but when you exit the third one, you go back to the 1+2 regular mode, and it will take another five "clicks" to get back to the advanced modes.
A note about that: the activation pulse which tells the uC to changes modes really is not a "click" because while the turn on must be less than 1 second it must also be longer than 60 miliseconds or it won't count. This is a major blessing and a really smart feature, because a quick accidental activation of your LED's will not knock you out of your chosen mode. Very nice. It means you pretty much have to deliberately choose to change modes once you get the hang of using the Aviatrix.
Let me back up, however, as I am getting ahead of myself.
My Aviatrix order arrived in a padded envelope. Inside was a pill bottle protecting the precious aviatrix rings: one red LED-only ring, and one RED/WHITE ring. The bottle protecting the rings rid me of any fears I might have had regarding damage or alteration or misalignment during shipping. Thank you Bawko! I opened the bottle and pulled forth two of the most beautiful pieces of work I have ever seen, each in its own bag, with padding. Here was flawless work, perfection worthy of SureFire itself. I was especially pleased with the spring contacts, as those are crucial, precision pieces of hardware, but Bawko's spring contacts look very nice indeed and seem to perform very well. Here is a top view of two rings. On the left is my red LED-only Aviatrix ring, and on the right is the stock SF ring (white) that came with my A2. The Aviatrix spring contacts are shorter, but actually have a slightly longer travel above the plane of the circuit board.
And here is a side view.
Note that the Aviatrix LED's are positioned slightly farther forward into the reflector holes than the stock LED's. Bawko tells me that this is because some of the dies of the various color LED's he is using were lower, and thus the lens needed to sit forward more in order for those LED's to work properly. This way, all rings are jigged up the same and treated the same. So far, I have not noticed much of a difference in either LED or incan beams due to this more forward LED position, although it may possibly be the case that there is just a bit more ringiness to the corona of the incan beam. I will report more on this after I've had more time to live with these rings and my A2-A.
The standard Aviatrix ring is a lot more sophistacted than the stock ring, and has a lot more circuitry on it:
Frankly, I'm amazed that Bawko managed to fit it all in the available space, but fit it all in he did, and lucky we all are for it!
OK. So, many of you will be taking off your SF A2 head or MA02 lamp, or LED ring for the first time, and some of you may be tempted to clean the inside of the lens, or lube up the contacts with some super-duper special corrosion resistant pro-brown-ex-ox-it or something. Let me give you a piece of advice:
Don't.
All of the contacts on the SF A2 are plated and are already corrosion resistant. A simple swipe with a Q-tip is all that is needed to clean them. Any attempt to clean the inside of the lens could end up making things worse than when you started. I'm deadly serious here. I can remember at least half a dozen cases posted here on CPF where people wanted to do something special and good for their SF lights, or remove some micro-scopic piece of dust from the lens, and ended up permanently damaging or disfiguring their lights.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
On the other hand, it IS a good idea to remove pocket lint and globs of grease and dust and anything else that might end up falling down inside the holes of your SF A2 head into the lens/reflector area. Run a Q-tip around the threads of both the head and body, or a cotton pipe cleaner, just to remove stuff that could fall off and go into the holes you are going to open up by removing things. Also, make sure your Aviatrix ring is clean, free of any drool or food particles that may have fallen from your gaping mouth as you admired it when first removing it from the package. Make sure your work surface is clean, and that your wife is not spraying hair spray or craft adhesive nearby, and so on.
So. Remove the head of your A2 by turning it off just like you'd expect. Ensure that the light is facing lens downward, at least partly, as otherwise the lamp could just fall out on its own and end up broken or dirty. Which reminds me: DON'T TOUCH THE GLASS ENVELOPE OF THE INCAN LAMP. If you do, clean with isopropyl alcohol and let dry for a few minutes before re-inserting it. I like to remove the lamp by grabbing the small ring with my fingernails and lifting straight out. I then just set it carefully on my work surface, glass end facing up at about a 45 degree angle.
After this, you will see the LED ring held in place by three screws. A #00 philips screw driver is what is normally needed, although if I remember correctly the very first A2's had slotted screws. In any case, be careful and take things slowly. It's easy for a screw driver tip to slip off and damage things. A pair of small tweezers is very useful for grabbing the tiny screws once they are fully unscrewed. I would do one screw at a time, and I would ensure that the head was tilted somewhat, with the screw to be removed at the bottom so that if it gets away from you and falls it will not fall into the lamp hole.
Once you have removed all three screws, you should be able to pull the ring out with tweezers, or simply invert it carefully into the palm of your hand, letting gravity pull the stock ring out.
Again, treat the ring with care, as it's fairly delicate: it doesn't take much to knock off a surface mount resistor, or snag a spring contact, or bend the LED lead wires or something.
For installation of your Aviatrix, simply line up the holes in the board with the screw holes and drop it gently into place, or use your tweezers to slowly lower it in—either way. Next, put the screws into their holes, and just turn them in a few turns—just enough to hold them in place, and make sure they are not cross threaded.
DO NOT WORRY IF THE HOLES IN THE RING ARE OFF CENTER SLIGHTLY FROM THE SCREW SHANKS.
When you tighten things down, the screw heads will pull things gently into alignment. So, to that end, turn the scews down, but don't do just one all the way tight, then move on to the next one. Rather, turn one down until it is almost touching, then move on and do the next one the same way, then the third one. Then turn the first one down another turn, so that it is just barely tight, then do the same to the other two. Then, snug each one down.
THERE IS NO NEED TO OVER-TIGHTEN THE SCREWS!
The pressure from two fingers turning at the narrowest part of the screw driver is plenty. Snug them down, but don't put much muscle into it! Here is what you will end up with:
Note that there are only two spring contacts on the standard (smart) Aviatrix rings to create the needed space for all that cool circuitry. This does not cause any problems for either the LED's or the incan lamp.
And speaking of that, remember to reinsert the incan lamp, then screw on the head hand tight. It's hard to over-tighten the head when using just your hands, so don't be shy about turning it on, but on the other hand, don't feel you are in some kind of muscle contest. Tighten it down good and tight by hand and that's good enough.
TA-DA!
You now have the most sophisticated flashlight on the planet: an A2-A.
Bow four times towards Bawko's home town in obeisance to his genius! Thank you Bawko, you nuclear powered chicken! :bow: :bow: :bow:
I'm very impressed with the Aviatrix rings. The quality of the work is second to none, even SureFire, and they allow a pretty damn sophisticated light to be even MORE sophisticated.
Bawko, you are a tribute to CPF ingenuity and integrity. The Aviatrix is a TRIUMPH.
I don't have beam shots, and as many pictures and results as I would like, but I felt that it would be better to get a review posted now, early on, and we can all add to this thread as buyers get their Aviatrices and experience the joys of owning an A2-A. For now, this is what I have, but I will be back with more reports, beam shots, thoughts, bad jokes at Bill Waites' expense and maybe pictures of Kate Beckinsale.
Until then, happy Aviatrixing people! And feel free to ask me any questions or post appropriate stuff to this thread.
Last edited:
