I work for a municipality. Our Fire Dept is aggressively pursuing Fed grants for emergency preparedness material purchases. They asked all the depts about their inventories of flashlights and indicated that everyone who needs a flashlight, should have a rechargeable light. This was my response to my boss - not to the Fire Chief, yet.
EMAIL TO BOSS:
"You probably don't want to get me started on flashlights and batteries- I can go on for hours, even days on them! We have a few, Surefire brand, lithium battery (10-year shelf life), LED (light emitting diode) lights in our red bags and some supervisors have them in their offices. The major advantage of these is you can grab them 5-10 years from now, and they will work as well then as they will right now when the batteries are new. Zero maintenance is required. There are no light bulbs to break/blow. If you have a supply of the lithium batteries (not as available as standard AA and D batteries, but not hard to get) on-hand, I think you are better off than using rechargeable flashlights. Again, you can stock up now and they'll be good (full capacity) for at least 10 years.
Rechargeable flashlights tend to have very slow charging systems within them and can take up to 16 hours to recharge and are usually good for an hour or two of use. The big problem I've seen around town is that they are left plugged in full time. Over time, 6 months to a year, the NiCAD batteries lose significant capacity to hold a charge. You end up with a flashlight that will work for a few minutes, maybe 10. Some of them may use the newer Nickel-Metal batteries which are better but will still lose capacity if left charging all the time.
Another scenairo is to use flashlights that use rechargeable batteries but don't have charging systems within them. You use stand-alone battery chargers to charge the batteries. Again, though, if you leave the batteries in the charger, they will lose capacity.
Generally, using rechargeable flashlights and flashlights that use rechargeable batteries requires routine maintenance of the batteries and practically no one is going to follow through with this maintenance in reality. If you leave the batteries out of the charger or the flashlight unplugged, both the NiCAD and Nickel-Metal batteries self-dicharge at a rate of about 1 to 1.5% per day so at the end of a month, they have lost 30 to 45% of their capacity/run time."
END OF EMAIL TO BOSS
My recommendation was surprisingly an easy sell to my boss. She wants me to provide her with a recommendation she can pass on to the Fire Chief. Obviously, we're not going to go out and buy 150 (for my dept only - probably 750 organization-wide) expensive Surefires that might tend to "walk away". I'd like to recommend a factory produced, rough service capable, probably plastic, simple on-off LED light that can be powered by AA Lithium primaries that produces maybe 60 or so lumens of light - a little more than a 3D mag. I'm thinking in the neighborhood of $40 to $60.00 each. These are not firm specs, just a start.
I just purchased a Fenix P1D CE which I love but this is not what I'm looking for. Its small, high performance, takes a 123, and would probably "walk away" very soon. I am familiar with the names Dorcy, Streamlight etc. but have never really done any research on them.
OK, now's the time for "us" to promote flashlight technology to a municipality. Please give me some recommendations. Please remember, it needs to be mainstream, simple, use AA Lithium primaries and be as bright or a little brighter than a Mag 3D and one that won't be an invite to walk away.
EMAIL TO BOSS:
"You probably don't want to get me started on flashlights and batteries- I can go on for hours, even days on them! We have a few, Surefire brand, lithium battery (10-year shelf life), LED (light emitting diode) lights in our red bags and some supervisors have them in their offices. The major advantage of these is you can grab them 5-10 years from now, and they will work as well then as they will right now when the batteries are new. Zero maintenance is required. There are no light bulbs to break/blow. If you have a supply of the lithium batteries (not as available as standard AA and D batteries, but not hard to get) on-hand, I think you are better off than using rechargeable flashlights. Again, you can stock up now and they'll be good (full capacity) for at least 10 years.
Rechargeable flashlights tend to have very slow charging systems within them and can take up to 16 hours to recharge and are usually good for an hour or two of use. The big problem I've seen around town is that they are left plugged in full time. Over time, 6 months to a year, the NiCAD batteries lose significant capacity to hold a charge. You end up with a flashlight that will work for a few minutes, maybe 10. Some of them may use the newer Nickel-Metal batteries which are better but will still lose capacity if left charging all the time.
Another scenairo is to use flashlights that use rechargeable batteries but don't have charging systems within them. You use stand-alone battery chargers to charge the batteries. Again, though, if you leave the batteries in the charger, they will lose capacity.
Generally, using rechargeable flashlights and flashlights that use rechargeable batteries requires routine maintenance of the batteries and practically no one is going to follow through with this maintenance in reality. If you leave the batteries out of the charger or the flashlight unplugged, both the NiCAD and Nickel-Metal batteries self-dicharge at a rate of about 1 to 1.5% per day so at the end of a month, they have lost 30 to 45% of their capacity/run time."
END OF EMAIL TO BOSS
My recommendation was surprisingly an easy sell to my boss. She wants me to provide her with a recommendation she can pass on to the Fire Chief. Obviously, we're not going to go out and buy 150 (for my dept only - probably 750 organization-wide) expensive Surefires that might tend to "walk away". I'd like to recommend a factory produced, rough service capable, probably plastic, simple on-off LED light that can be powered by AA Lithium primaries that produces maybe 60 or so lumens of light - a little more than a 3D mag. I'm thinking in the neighborhood of $40 to $60.00 each. These are not firm specs, just a start.
I just purchased a Fenix P1D CE which I love but this is not what I'm looking for. Its small, high performance, takes a 123, and would probably "walk away" very soon. I am familiar with the names Dorcy, Streamlight etc. but have never really done any research on them.
OK, now's the time for "us" to promote flashlight technology to a municipality. Please give me some recommendations. Please remember, it needs to be mainstream, simple, use AA Lithium primaries and be as bright or a little brighter than a Mag 3D and one that won't be an invite to walk away.
Last edited:
