AvidHiker
Enlightened
Well, for my very first thread I wanted to make it something relatively interesting, but my beamshots didn't turn out quite as nicely as I had hoped and the competition was a bit too weak. I decided to post them anyway for the benefit of the community although I do plan to give it another try. I think I'll need a more worthy contender for the Quad, maybe I can wait for a P7.
After snagging one of Gene's Quad Cree Q5 drop-ins I noticed the lack of info on CPF related to the Quad - for obvious reasons I suppose (I can't imagine there's been that many made). Let me start by saying how much I appreciate the solid construction of this drop-in, it cetainly offers some piece of mind. And, yes, its quite pricey for a mag drop-in, and its not upgradable... but I couldn't resist. I required one more light (yeah, right) for my collection, something obscenely bright. Now to fully justify the purchase - not only to myself, but to my significant other - I came upon the "blind and bludgeon" concept (not sure if I've read that somewhere or I made it up). Amazingly enough, that even made sense to her. I honestly can't see myself ever using this thing as a weapon, but one thing remains indisputable, the entire package IS at least somewhat intimidating.
Many of us already appreciate Gene's generous heatsinking (something currently hard to come by in a mag design), and he claims this thing is built to run for extended periods, so one of the first things I did was put that claim to the test. I decided on a 6D host and loaded it up with low self discharge 10000mAh NiMH D cells to accomodate the demanding current requirements (6 alkalines can run it as well, but will be overloaded and require a rest after 90 minutes or so). These particular cells weigh almost exactly the same as a standard alkaline D-cell (I also hit up Kaidomain for an 8.4V 2D Li-ion pack, still waiting on that). Somewhere in another thread I read that each emitter has a dedicated driver, and is fitted with a very nice Fraen faceted reflector before being sunk into some fancy aerospace grade high temp epoxy. It all adds up to one impressive little package IMO. So, the fully assembled light first needed a runtime test, but I don't own a light meter... but I would love to see how hot it gets... and once it starts to cool I can reasonably assume that its no longer running in regulation... and I do work in a lab... ah, an instrument that allows me to log temperature data onto the computer, a simple experiment is born.
Supporting the head with a piece of styrofoam, I attached a thermocouple with tape and some arctic silver thermal compound. Here is the graph (x-axis is time in hours):
Obviously, the temperature with this setup will be a bit higher than in normal use, but it won't be too far off I'd say. I was pleased to see that it nearly ran a full four hours and appeared to be very nicely regulated for the entire time. I was able to get "useful" light out of it for an additional couple hours, but after about an hour I'd guess I was getting less than 15 lumens out. Once fully warmed up, the head was pretty hot, but not hot enough to severely burn anything.
The contenders:
For the beamshots, I ran to a local park for some distance shots. It was a bit on the humid side so there was a haze in the air which didn't seem to help my pictures - and seemed to limit the range of my Striker. I forgot the reflector so I didn't get a standard mag 6D shot (with the krypton bulb), but I took one later at home. My seouled Striker was previously my most powerful light, and I still find the throw impressive, but the Quad simply destroyed it. The Striker does have some relatively weak (but IMO still useful) spill that really didn't show in the pictures, and a fairly large hotspot that I really like. The Quad has an impressive combination of spill and throw, with a nice round hotspot - you'd never know there was more than one emitter. The first two comparison shots seemed to exaggerate the Quad's brightness, but I was carefult to keep the camera settings the same for each set. Lights were run for about a minute before taking the picture. I used long exposures with a fully opened aperture and low ISO to keep grain and chroma noise to a minimum. Striker first, then Quad (in case you're blind).
First, aiming parallel to the ground towards the base of a spruce, about 200 feet away (didn't have time to measure but google earth seems to agree).
Next, aiming for the top of another spruce, about 50-75 feet away.
Finally, less than 50 feet from my front door - 1) Striker, 2) 6D with krypton bulb and fresh alkalines, 3) Quad:
That's it for now, of course I welcome any comments/suggestions/additional requests - thanks for looking :wave:
EDIT: Updated runtime graph including Kaidomain 2D Pack
Below is the combined temperature plot, again I am assuming that regulated runtime ends when temperature falls (which happens fairly quickly, so it should be accurate to within a minute or so).
The Kaidomain 2D Li-Ion pack was used with their shortened, gold plated spring. It should be noted that the fairly weak (too thin?) material used for the negative contact in this pack is easily damaged by the spring. Using a bench grinder I smoothed out the spring end which seems to help, but I still see evidence of the spring cutting further into the contact (this is kind of disappointing, but as long as it doesn't cause a total failure I'm ok with it I suppose - might add a thin washer or something to protect it at this point). I was using a 2D maglite this time and, as you can see from the graph, it got significantly hotter (this will be the last such test in a 2D I'd say, don't want to damage my Quad!). The interesting thing here is that the entire body of the light was at or near this temperature, so it would not be possible (for me at least) to hold with bare hands after maybe 20 or 30 minutes of constant operation. However, when used in the 6D maglite, the temperature in the handle area of the light is still bearable for the entire ~4 hours of runtime. Now I'm thinking I should have used a second thermocouple at that position, oh well.
Anyway, with the Kaidomain pack, the light never falls out of regulation as the pack is protected from overdischarge. When voltage falls below a cetain value (spec is 5.5V), the protection kicks in and breaks the circuit. Since this value is still well above the minimum operating voltage for the Quad, it keeps right on going at max until the battery quits. I wasn't able to measure voltage during operation, but by very briefly connecting the charger to the discharged pack (to reset the protection circuit), it measured 6.9V (for what its worth - not sure if that value would be equivalent to the voltage under load when the protection kicked in). From this "fully" discharged state, charging takes about 7-8 hours for the charger light to turn green (indicating it has reached ~8.4V), significantly longer than what Kaidomain suggested in the marketplace thread (~5 hours deeply discharged). But, after about 5 hours, the wall transformer had cooled down pretty significantly so I suspect you could stop the charging at that point without too much loss in runtime.
All in all, I love this setup - LOTS of power from a 2D mag with decent runtime and without the need for serious modification (still even using the stock lens). Sure, it gets pretty hot (doesn't seem to be hot enough to really burn you from brief contact), but a glove or something wrapped around the handle would probably do for insulation. In the unlikely event that I actually need to run this light constantly for over 30 minutes, I might consider switching back to the 6D.
I'd like to post some more beamshots when I have time, but I was waiting to get something with a P7 in it for a good comparison. I'll try to get some longer distance shots when I have a chance. This thing throws pretty well, but given the amazingly bright spill I'm not sure how much additional distance I'll get out of it, but I'd like to see...
After snagging one of Gene's Quad Cree Q5 drop-ins I noticed the lack of info on CPF related to the Quad - for obvious reasons I suppose (I can't imagine there's been that many made). Let me start by saying how much I appreciate the solid construction of this drop-in, it cetainly offers some piece of mind. And, yes, its quite pricey for a mag drop-in, and its not upgradable... but I couldn't resist. I required one more light (yeah, right) for my collection, something obscenely bright. Now to fully justify the purchase - not only to myself, but to my significant other - I came upon the "blind and bludgeon" concept (not sure if I've read that somewhere or I made it up). Amazingly enough, that even made sense to her. I honestly can't see myself ever using this thing as a weapon, but one thing remains indisputable, the entire package IS at least somewhat intimidating.
Many of us already appreciate Gene's generous heatsinking (something currently hard to come by in a mag design), and he claims this thing is built to run for extended periods, so one of the first things I did was put that claim to the test. I decided on a 6D host and loaded it up with low self discharge 10000mAh NiMH D cells to accomodate the demanding current requirements (6 alkalines can run it as well, but will be overloaded and require a rest after 90 minutes or so). These particular cells weigh almost exactly the same as a standard alkaline D-cell (I also hit up Kaidomain for an 8.4V 2D Li-ion pack, still waiting on that). Somewhere in another thread I read that each emitter has a dedicated driver, and is fitted with a very nice Fraen faceted reflector before being sunk into some fancy aerospace grade high temp epoxy. It all adds up to one impressive little package IMO. So, the fully assembled light first needed a runtime test, but I don't own a light meter... but I would love to see how hot it gets... and once it starts to cool I can reasonably assume that its no longer running in regulation... and I do work in a lab... ah, an instrument that allows me to log temperature data onto the computer, a simple experiment is born.
Supporting the head with a piece of styrofoam, I attached a thermocouple with tape and some arctic silver thermal compound. Here is the graph (x-axis is time in hours):
Obviously, the temperature with this setup will be a bit higher than in normal use, but it won't be too far off I'd say. I was pleased to see that it nearly ran a full four hours and appeared to be very nicely regulated for the entire time. I was able to get "useful" light out of it for an additional couple hours, but after about an hour I'd guess I was getting less than 15 lumens out. Once fully warmed up, the head was pretty hot, but not hot enough to severely burn anything.
The contenders:
For the beamshots, I ran to a local park for some distance shots. It was a bit on the humid side so there was a haze in the air which didn't seem to help my pictures - and seemed to limit the range of my Striker. I forgot the reflector so I didn't get a standard mag 6D shot (with the krypton bulb), but I took one later at home. My seouled Striker was previously my most powerful light, and I still find the throw impressive, but the Quad simply destroyed it. The Striker does have some relatively weak (but IMO still useful) spill that really didn't show in the pictures, and a fairly large hotspot that I really like. The Quad has an impressive combination of spill and throw, with a nice round hotspot - you'd never know there was more than one emitter. The first two comparison shots seemed to exaggerate the Quad's brightness, but I was carefult to keep the camera settings the same for each set. Lights were run for about a minute before taking the picture. I used long exposures with a fully opened aperture and low ISO to keep grain and chroma noise to a minimum. Striker first, then Quad (in case you're blind).
First, aiming parallel to the ground towards the base of a spruce, about 200 feet away (didn't have time to measure but google earth seems to agree).
Next, aiming for the top of another spruce, about 50-75 feet away.
Finally, less than 50 feet from my front door - 1) Striker, 2) 6D with krypton bulb and fresh alkalines, 3) Quad:
That's it for now, of course I welcome any comments/suggestions/additional requests - thanks for looking :wave:
EDIT: Updated runtime graph including Kaidomain 2D Pack
Below is the combined temperature plot, again I am assuming that regulated runtime ends when temperature falls (which happens fairly quickly, so it should be accurate to within a minute or so).
The Kaidomain 2D Li-Ion pack was used with their shortened, gold plated spring. It should be noted that the fairly weak (too thin?) material used for the negative contact in this pack is easily damaged by the spring. Using a bench grinder I smoothed out the spring end which seems to help, but I still see evidence of the spring cutting further into the contact (this is kind of disappointing, but as long as it doesn't cause a total failure I'm ok with it I suppose - might add a thin washer or something to protect it at this point). I was using a 2D maglite this time and, as you can see from the graph, it got significantly hotter (this will be the last such test in a 2D I'd say, don't want to damage my Quad!). The interesting thing here is that the entire body of the light was at or near this temperature, so it would not be possible (for me at least) to hold with bare hands after maybe 20 or 30 minutes of constant operation. However, when used in the 6D maglite, the temperature in the handle area of the light is still bearable for the entire ~4 hours of runtime. Now I'm thinking I should have used a second thermocouple at that position, oh well.
Anyway, with the Kaidomain pack, the light never falls out of regulation as the pack is protected from overdischarge. When voltage falls below a cetain value (spec is 5.5V), the protection kicks in and breaks the circuit. Since this value is still well above the minimum operating voltage for the Quad, it keeps right on going at max until the battery quits. I wasn't able to measure voltage during operation, but by very briefly connecting the charger to the discharged pack (to reset the protection circuit), it measured 6.9V (for what its worth - not sure if that value would be equivalent to the voltage under load when the protection kicked in). From this "fully" discharged state, charging takes about 7-8 hours for the charger light to turn green (indicating it has reached ~8.4V), significantly longer than what Kaidomain suggested in the marketplace thread (~5 hours deeply discharged). But, after about 5 hours, the wall transformer had cooled down pretty significantly so I suspect you could stop the charging at that point without too much loss in runtime.
All in all, I love this setup - LOTS of power from a 2D mag with decent runtime and without the need for serious modification (still even using the stock lens). Sure, it gets pretty hot (doesn't seem to be hot enough to really burn you from brief contact), but a glove or something wrapped around the handle would probably do for insulation. In the unlikely event that I actually need to run this light constantly for over 30 minutes, I might consider switching back to the 6D.
I'd like to post some more beamshots when I have time, but I was waiting to get something with a P7 in it for a good comparison. I'll try to get some longer distance shots when I have a chance. This thing throws pretty well, but given the amazingly bright spill I'm not sure how much additional distance I'll get out of it, but I'd like to see...
Last edited:
,maybe to late...post if you got em,nj.
