Blast from the past thread

[Exit32]

It was the 3-watt Aluminum LED Flashlight that started my fascination with LED flashlights many years ago. I still have one of these in my nightstand drawer, and I've managed to keep one of these old timers in its original, unopened packaging. I wonder if the CR123A battery they included is still good.

 

[akula88]

State of my flashaholism

From 2003, when Surefire, ARC, McLux, Streamlights were mostly the game -- flashaholism peaked for about a couple of years -- mostly Surefires. But interest eventually tapered down, and sold a number of those good collections along the years.

This is my current lights and parts, a lot of legacy lights and bodies, but manage to have a few update in 2013 (XPG, etc).

 

[archimedes]

Some rare parts in there .... Thanks for the photo

 

[ven]

Amazing collection akula

What is so good, as desirable as they were back in the day, it must be 10 fold more desirable today.

 

[kamagong]

My EDC for the past 15+ years.

 

[ZMZ67]

I must admit I'm late to the party and the folks having all the fun back then have long since left the party.

But I read a lot. And it seems the Inova was deemed as less expensive alternatives to SureFire back then. Especially with the flashaholic crowd. Being a fan of cop lights I tend to collect 'duty lights' more than anything else. And I lucked up and scored a minty version of each Inova made by Emissive Energy. X5, X1 etc.

I have a few versions of the X1, and will talk about those later. It seems folks went gaga over the X5 but I'm kinda scratching my head on why.

By today's standards the X5 with it's angry blue 5MM LEDs doesn't look that great but in the early days it was a big deal. With a practical run time around 5 hours and the ability to produce light for something like 20 hours it was able to do things that even the Luxeon powered lights of the time couldn't do. It was/is a very tough light with high marks for reliability at a price most people could afford. I don't really use my X5s anymore save for the UV model but they are prized pieces in my collection. I must have a dozen total and all the LED colors white,red,green,blue and UV.The only one I didn't get was IR.

 

[Climb14er]

Removed...

 

[radu1976]

When starting to collect flashlights my first love was a titanium INOVA XO3 TIROS. I loved that light a lot but when I tried it with 2 x RCR123s I killed it instantly. Bought more of XO3s after but I feel like non of them had the perfect white beam my first XO3 had. Right now I have several XO3s, XOs, X5s and all T-series TIROS except the T1. I still love my TIROS but I have some newer NITE IZE models - 3 x X1 55-lumens, 2 x X2, XO3 228-lumens and a small XS as well -
2 years ago I was happy to buy a PENTAGON L2 which is using the same emitter like my TIROS X03s and T3 : LUXEON III. The PENTAGON has such great anodizing, it's a pity that this american company was done years ago.

 

[radu1976]

The X5s pictured are : white and coloured 2003-2006 models, one 2008 X5 - still made by Emissive Energy and having the best beam from all my X5s -, a countycomm ltd. ed. X5 with dark green HA and the latest 6/31 lumens NITE IZE version.