Surefire A2 – a pretty nice house inspection light

Valolammas

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I know you are all thinking "oh no, not another A2 thread", but since it's mandatory for CPF members to make an A2 appreciation thread at some point, I thought I'd take care of it, since I actually used mine today and was happy to use it.

My wife and I currently live in a nice apartment. I has been just right for us, but now we have a son, who, it appears, isn't getting any smaller, so sooner or later we are probably going to get a bit crowded. So we are looking for a house (and also because my wife wants a garden to toil in). We are not in any hurry, but we go and take a look every time a promising one turns up for sale at a not-quite-exorbitant price. I find I actually like doing this, since it's always interesting to see different kinds of houses. Besides, it provides a really good reason to peer under roofs & foundations and into all the dark corners and crevices that a house has, without the fear of getting arrested. We went to see a couple of houses today, and as we were leaving, my wife actually asked me to take a flashlight along. No problem, dear! (I already had three, but let's not tell her that.)

So. Almost every time I go take a look into a dark basement or under the foundation there's some couple there saying "we should have brought a flashlight" to each other. Naturally, I'm the only one who ever does. But since – for some unfathomable reason – no-one else ever does bring a flashlight to these house exhibitions (is there a proper term for this in English?) I'd feel a bit self-conscious carrying a big, really powerful light around, especially at summer, but the A2 is perfect for this purpose, since it's small and inconspicuous. Sure, there are other lights that fit that criteria, but the A2 has certain other advantages as well. I'm sure you all know all about it's LEDs and regulated incan beam, so I won't bore you with the specs. If you don't, go read JS's erudite and unabridged A2 thread.

The LEDs are perfectly sufficient for looking into closets, small storage spaces, just seeing the lay-outs of rooms etc. But the cool thing is that with the LEDs, you don't really have to point the light at anything, they just provide a sort of area illumination. If you have a beam with a hotspot, you have to point it at something and then your eyes (and everyone else's) tend to follow the hotspot. Yeah, sure, you can do the ceiling bounce, but I find many people look at you funny, if you point a flashlight at the ceiling, when you are not actually looking at the ceiling.

And the incan beam? I find it provides just the right amount of light to be useful without being blinding or insufficient. Yes, the color rendition is a thing of beauty and has helped me to spot a number of rotting or moldy ceiling or floor beams, but the thing I'm most impressed with it is how it never hurts to look at the beam. The incan beam is directional, of course, but it doesn't have a small, really bright hotspot. Instead, it has a fairly large and smooth (dare I say diffuse) bright, well, "hotarea". You can tell it's bright by the way it throws and lights things up, but even if you use it up close, it's never blinding or inconvenient. Not in the way a tight hotspot is. For example, the UKE 4AA will out-throw the A2 even with its 2W bulb, but the tradeoff to that ability is that close up, the UKE's hotspot is tiny and too bright to look at directly. Not so with the A2. It just lights things up and does it beautifully and pleasantly. It's a joy to use at any distance.

The two-stage tailcap seemed a bit awkward at first, but now that I'm used to it, I find that it's actually quite convenient, fast, and intuitive.

I know it has been said over and over again that the A2 is, above all, a useful light, and I have to agree with that. It's not a wow-light, and I wasn't much impressed at first, but it grew on me. I didn't really think it would, but it did. Probably that's because I finally started using it for real instead of just playing around with it.

-----------

So that's it really. I'll just add a couple of other occasions when the A2 has been useful to me. One time (this was the day I first got it) my wife & I were going to visit a couple of friends. They live in a blockhouse, which has a stairwell that is kept locked at all times. Approaching the door, we realized that we'd both left our cell phones home, so we couldn't let them know we were there. My wife was upset that we'd have to walk back home to get them and then back to our friends' place again. Wait a moment, I said, let me try something. So I took out the A2 and I shone the incan beam at their windows a couple of times, and sure enough, they noticed and came down to let us in. Problem solved.

The other time we were driving to visit relatives, when we had to stop in the middle of nowhere to fill up the car's window washer's tank. It wasn't raining, but the roads were wet and other cars would throw up a lot of dirt in their wake, so we had to use the washer almost constantly. Lucky we had a new canister of washing liquid in the trunk. Anyway, this was in november with no snow on the ground yet, and pretty late at night with an overcast sky, so it was as dark as it can ever get outdoors. Naturally, I took the opportunity to shine my lights around a bit. With ambient light around the A2's LED beam often looks rather anemic, but when it's really, really dark, it's amazing how far it can throw! It easily lit up trees on the other side of the road, and including the ditch, that must have been about 20 meters or so. Ok so it didn't light them up brightly, but I was impressed all the same.
 

jumpstat

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Good to hear you are enjoying your SF A2. I personally do not one but I do have other types of the same stable....
 

Daniel_sk

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Excellent, :thanks:. I really enjoyed reading your story.
Valolammas said:
I know you are all thinking "oh no, not another A2 thread", but since it's mandatory for CPF members to make an A2 appreciation thread at some point,
Haha, that's true :laughing:. As a new owner of this beautiful light, I am also thinking about writing some lines about it (along with some pictures that I would like to take) :grin2:.
 

LED61

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Nice story, I own a Kroma that does about the same and maybe more, but there is no denying in my mind that I really want an A2 also, if I could only get the black square one that I really want. A reulated incan beam is impressive to be sure.
 

ScooterBug

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i read everything about the A2. it is my favorite light. if you like it now just get one of Atomic Chicken's LED rings and you will really be impressed, i am. :D
 

leukos

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Thanks for the story. Sometimes we forget about the practical benefits of high-end lights. :)
 

Valolammas

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Thanks for your kind comments, everyone.

i read everything about the A2. it is my favorite light. if you like it now just get one of Atomic Chicken's LED rings and you will really be impressed, i am. :D

I would, but last I checked he didn't sell them internationally yet. Besides, I don't have a credit card (though that may be a blessing in disguise).
 

Daniel_sk

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Thanks for your kind comments, everyone.



I would, but last I checked he didn't sell them internationally yet. Besides, I don't have a credit card (though that may be a blessing in disguise).

I am also thinking about getting the Aviatrix ring(a red version, so I could switch between one and three red LEDs, to save battery power, plus I could use rechargeables without damaging the LEDs), Bawko will ship internationally in the near future.
You don't need a credit card, a debit card is enough for PayPal (I have one, even as a student, that costs me 15$/year?) and having PayPal opens so many possibilities :paypal: :D
 

Valolammas

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You don't need a credit card, a debit card is enough for PayPal (I have one, even as a student, that costs me 15$/year?) and having PayPal opens so many possibilities :paypal: :D

Really? I already registered for Paypal once, but it immediately asked me for a card number, so I just sighed "oh well" and clicked cancel. Thanks for the tip, I'll have to look into it.
 

carrot

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Good story! Nice to see people appreciating one of my favorite lights.

Actually for Paypal, all you need is a bank account with checking.
 

defusion

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You also need a credit/debit card as backup.
you don't need backup, it's not like the international banking system is prone to dying, and if it were, paypal would be the last of my worries.
but credit cards take away the waiting period it takes to get paypal to add the money to your account after it was transfered to them.
 

22hornet

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Nice story!
Now, allow me to make this thread complete :grin2:.
As with all A2 stories, now there must come a reply describing the merits of the L2 versus the A2.:)

Well, for inspecting property, I always use my L2 with great success and have found it a brilliant light for the task.

Personally I do not have an A2, though it must be a very good light, I presume. The 2 things that keep me from buying one are the inability to use RCR123 cells and the fact that I may need to replace the bulb every now and then.

Kind regards,:wave:
Joris
 

Valolammas

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Nice story!
Now, allow me to make this thread complete :grin2:.
As with all A2 stories, now there must come a reply describing the merits of the L2 versus the A2.:)

Indeed! Thank you.:) Now all that's missing is someone saying that he duct-taped an Arc AAA to his G2 and it does everything the A2 does and then some. :laughing:

Personally I do not have an A2, though it must be a very good light, I presume. The 2 things that keep me from buying one are the inability to use RCR123 cells and the fact that I may need to replace the bulb every now and then.

I've never seen an L2 in person, but I'm sure it's an amazing light, too. If you get the Aviatrix ring for the A2, you CAN use rechargeables. If you can make them fit into the light, that is.

That leaves the bulb issue, which is unfortunately true. But I've discovered that I like incans better than LEDs (I do like LEDs too and nothing wrong with them, just a personal preference), so I'm willing to put up with it.

Oh yes, and since no thread is truly complete without pictures, I'll add a couple of those (click on them if you want to see them larger). The first one is a bigger version of my avatar:


..and the second I took just for the fun of it. Since we've had so many "lights with knives" and "lights with guns" pictures, I figured I'd start a hot new "lights with toys" trend.


As you can see, I have an older flat-sided model with the long pocketclip. I bought it last summer, so I guess it had sat in storage for a while... The cells that came with it were stamped 1-2014.
 

Wetterman

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So it's probably from year 2004. Where did you get it ? I haven't seen any of them for sale in Finland.
 

Valolammas

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I bought it from Germany. In Finland, you can get them from Kyoshi-Store. I'm not affiliated with that store in any way, nor have I ever bought anything from them. I'm sure there are other shops that will order one for you if you ask them.
 

Wetterman

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As I assumed the prices are twice as much as overseas and they don't even have them in stock. I bought mine from a dealer in US a month ago and got it delivered to my door for about 130e.
 
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