Atomic Chicken,
Thanks! I appreciate the kind words! My avatar, BTW, is a pic of Kate Beckinsale from one of the Underworld movies. She rocks!
Leukos,
Yeah. I know. It's high time for the first post in Part 2 to get filled in with good stuff. But, alas, it will be a while longer before I form up my notes into a presentable post. Sorry!
Everyone,
Personally, I've never had to rotate my MA02! Everytime I've installed a new one or just unscrewed and rescrewed on the head for some reason, the beam has come back almost exactly the same.
In any case, there are two points to consider here:
1. The oval beam is
oval by design! If the beam were round, the throw would be less.
2. If you can manage to find an orientation where you get a round beam, I suspect that that means that you are
optimizing the loss from the LEDs/holes such that you are losing throw. Or trading throw for aesthetics.
You can do this, of course, but
it was not the intention of the design.
As for frosting the lamp to get a "much better" beam, it all depends on what you mean by "better". If by "better" you mean "looks pretty on a white wall", well then yes, by all means, frost and rotate and add some vasoline to the lens. Or maybe some scotch tape! Yeah. There ya go. With lots of fussing and futsing you can get your A2 a bit closer to the beam of an E2e or an LED light!
Or--and HERE's an idea!--you could just buy an E2e or an LED light
in the first place!.
FASTCAR,
So, you come into this thread and post--what?--some jerky comment like "The A2 was a great light...a few years ago"? What gives? Let me ask you, DID YOU EVEN READ PART 1 OF THIS? Or are you just tossing out a knee jerk comment like that to improve your image (or post count)?
Comments like this always annoy me. I suppose what people mean when they say things like that is that there are much better lights for the money available today, than there were a couple years ago. And that, by comparison, the A2 has fallen behind and is no longer a good value for the money. It's old technology.
But, again, it all depends on your needs and priorities. I've said it again and again. I've said it till I was blue in the face. And, evidently, I will have to continue to say it: the A2 is an easy mark. It's easy to "prove" or show how it's a lousy flashlight for the money. How one of the latest and greatest Cree lights or K2 lights is such a better light. The problem with all of these "proofs", though, is that the fact is that for a certain class of users, for a certain class of uses, the A2 remains unrivaled. It is still the very best light for my EDC uses. Period. There is no other that is better at any price.
Obviously, that's just me, and for others, the A2 is a bad choice. No question. I have never championed the A2 as the sort of light that everyone should have, that is so overwhelmingly great that it blows everything else away. No. It's not that light. Nothing about it is going to WOW! you or blow you away--not if you're like most people.
(As a side note, though, for me the A2 was love at first sight. I knew it was going to be perfect for me. But, I was fairly mature as a flashaholic at that point, and had already gone through a number of lights in search of what I needed. So I could recognize the greatness of the A2 at that point, whereas I'm not sure that would have been the case if it had been my starting point.)
What is the greatness of the A2? Versatility and utility. The
quality and
utility of the light from the incandescent part of the A2 is unrivaled in a light of its size. It's not the prettiest beam, or the most pleasing light to look at,
but when it comes to looking at THINGS (and not the light itself), the light from the A2 incan is awesome.
The A2 is a tool. And as a tool it is outstanding. It's not a "amaze your friends and family" kind of light. It's not the light you shine up on your ceiling and get all dreamy over. It's not the light that sits on your shelf as King or Queen. (Although it may be the one that sits in a drawer!)
No. For certain people (like myself) the A2 is the trusty, every day carry, work horse light that sees the most use of all.
I love my A2. If I could keep only one light out of all the lights I own, it would be the A2, hands down, in a second. It's a really great light, now, two years ago, or ten years hence.