I need picking AA LED lights for Peace Corp

I am having trouble picking good, reliable and affordable LED lights that use only AA batteries. My sister-in-law is going to Africa for the Peace Corp and I promised to get lights and batteries. I may add non-LED light also depending on price. Surefires and others using 123's are out as the cost of batteries and lamps is excessive. The (Third) World runs on AAs so the ARC AAA is also out /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

My thoughts so far:
CMG Ultra
CMG Reactor III
InReTech 2AA Drop-in

Long battery life is paramount as shipping is expensive and unreliable. She *may* have to use what she brings for one year. Thanks in advance! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

BTW, she leaves early June so lights must be available now.

if it is long battery life you want, get her an infinity (non-ultra)

I find that in very dark situations the light is easily good enough to walk trails, find the outhouse, etc.

the ultra is good too, brighter, but only half the runtime.

personally, I'd go with the infinity, infinity ultra, and a madmax, because the madmax will also completely deplete AA's.

the madmax has an advantage in that it looks like a 'standard maglite', so it will be less likely to be stolen.

for the price, I'd also send her with a photon 2 red or yellow, as they get 120 hours or so of light, and it would be a good backup, even though there is no batteries available for it.

Regulated Luxeon lights are great for the techie crowd but maybe aren't the most cost effective solution.

For smaller LED lights, the CMG Infinity Ultra is nice. She can carry it on a neck lanyard under her shirt (won't lose it easily), and it should run well even on crappy almost-dead zinc-carbon cells. The Infinity (non-Ultra) needs even less battery juice but you start wanting something brighter.

For incandescents the 2AA Minimag is the standby. There's some nice PT lights at low prices at:

http://store.yahoo.com/skishop/printecflas.html

She might bring a Tec40 (or even a Surge) along just to have something real bright available if she needs it. The Tec40 has the advantage of using PR-base bulbs which are easier to find over there, or to mail to her if needed. The Tec 20 uses two AA's and might be a good alternative to the Minimag. I don't know offhand if it uses a PR bulb or a lamp assembly. Do bring spare lamps, they're light and cheap.

Unless she's using these lights all the time, a 48-pack of AA's for $10 from Circuit City will probably keep her LED lights going for a whole year. Or you can get her a bunch of NiMH AA's, and a solar charger or two if there's no power where she's going.

Oh yes, if she's really working in places with no power, maybe a headlamp is apropos. Elektrolumens has a nice one for $29.99 that uses four AA's and a Luxeon (resistored, unregulated).

As a returned Peace Corp Volunteer (1982) in East Africa, I know how important a flashlight will be for all around use and security. I had a motorcycle without a working headlight. Everywhere I rode, I used a first generation UK 4AA light as my sole light source, even navigating back dirt roads. To this day, I still use that light. I also ditto the fact that it has to be AA powered.

If price is no problem, I would go with the ARC LSHP with rechargables (assuming that the person has access to electricty or get a solar charger), plus an Infinity Ultra to be carried all the time. If the ARC is too rich, then a Badboy 500 or a LGI (but it is a little big) would be good. Just remember, this light will be more used that just about anything else that is brought (besides a music collection) and one should not scrimp on such an important tool.

If the person is going to Africa, most assignments will be in areas with "quality dark" (no or not much electricity) so I would not worry about having a light that needs to be extremely bright.

Durability and reliability are the main items to remember.

I'd also get her 20 of the keychain LED lights from countycomm.com ($1 each), for emergencies or to give out as gifts. Or maybe even more than 20. Each one comes in its own little clear plastic wrapper like a peppermint. You can hand them out like candy.

The UKE 4AA is a nice light, similar to the PT40 but the UKE uses an integrated lamp assembly. The PT40 may be easier to deal with because of its PR bulb.

My current thoughts:

Two PT40's at $10 each (from link above), so she'll have a spare

5 spare bulbs at around say $1 each, $5

CMG Ultra-G on neck lanyard, and maybe a spare one, $15 each from Countycomm.com

20 keychain lights, $20 from Countycomm.com

40 or 48 cell pack of AA's, $10 (Circuit City, Costco)

Total is $70-85, less than you'd pay for just one LSH-P or Surefire.

I thought of substituting a PT20 or two (2AA incandescent) for one of the PT40's, but the trouble is if they both use PR lamps then putting the PT40 lamp into the PT20 will give very dim light, while putting the PT20 lamp into the PT40 will give a "pop!" followed by no light. So you may be better off with just one kind of lamp, leaving fewer mistakes to make. (On the other hand, two-cell replacement bulbs may be easier to find over there. Not that she'll use up her spares if she brings enough, but you have to consider fairly likely incidents in which she loses all her stuff that's she's not carrying with her at that moment).

Oh yes, one nice characteristic of the CMG Infinity/Ultra lights is they can run fine on pretty weak batteries. So she can use fresh batteries in the PT incandescent lights, and when they get weak, cycle them into the CMG. That keeps the CMG supplied with batteries for "free".

Forgot! There's a group buy of 1800 mAH AA NiMH cells on B/S/T that closes around today!!! It may be too late, but you could check to see if you can still get in on it. 20 NiMH and a charger can substitute for an awful lot of alkalines, if electricity is available to run the charger...

For serious third world use, I'd stay away from bulbs in general, for sure custom ones like in the UKE (which I think is an otherwise neat light). Simple, tough LED units would be my suggestion. CMG Ultra, Infinity and Reactor III would be on my list of possibles. As weight is sure to be an issue, I'd favor another light over a pile of heavy throw away batteries. I like the solar charger/NiMH idea. I'd steer clear of mains run rechargers. High tech ones (like the Mahas) are sure to fall victim to power line problems, even 'brick simple' trickle chargers are at risk on the sort of third world power systems I've lived with. If vehicles are available, perhaps one run from 12 VDC is worth considering. Since it's light, I might risk the Maha, but only as a backup for the solar unit. The fall back is local AA cells, no doubt a workable solution.

I'd also plan on leaving it all there. For this reson alone, custom bulb assemblies are out. PR based lights at best questionable. Anything more than keeping it clean and changing batteries is likely to be problematical.

While the 'free fob lights' as gifts is a good thought (and I'd probably do something like that), it's not a serious alternative to a CMG, that is it's not realistic to expect it to be working in any way in a year's time.

Doug Owen

The problem with incandescents is that when the bulb breaks (which it will) replacements will not be found - - as such I had them mailed in but often the mail would get lost. What I would have paid for a LED light back then . . . . Listen to experience!

Again, most folks on this board will not understand the importance of a flashlight for a Peace Corp person. Most places will not have electricity, and if they do, for only a few hours a day. Cost should be secondary if possible. Bring rechargable - - one can always buy cheap carbon zinc batteries in country.

While it may be neat to give away cheap LED lights with unobtainable batteries, I would suggest bringing cheap AA LED lights to give away instead. The value of one of these lights to a local would be immense. When I was in China a couple of years ago, I brought a dozen Brinkman Longlife LEDs to give away. As far as I know, they are still going strong.

Your criteria are AA batteries and hassle free use for up to a year in a 3d world country.

I'd suggest the Ultra for all the reasons previously mentioned. I'd also like to add the PT Matrix. It's a light body that uses regulated long life LEDs, is waterproof and also uses standard PR bulbs.

A handful of keychain lights would round out the package.

Hmm, I wasn't familiar with the Brinkmann but this might be it. It's a 2-cell single-LED light and apparently has a dc-dc converter inside. I think I'd go for the CMG Ultra at about the same price.

Here (from Ebay) is a PR-based LED lamp module for a 4-cell light like the PT40 (no DC-DC converter so simpler and cheaper than something like an Opalec).

I see on Ebay there's also a number of 3-cell and 4-cell LED lights (example) that are pretty inexpensive (like $5).
I wonder why lights like this aren't more common on CPF. I'd go for a 4-cell rather than a 3-cell one to leave greater margin for weak batteries. I'm kinda suspicious of the Reactor 3 for that reason.

Replacing incandescent lamps now and then just doesn't seem like a big deal to me though, as long as you have some spares.

For absolute longevity, grab her either a CMG Infinity (regular, NOT the Ultra or UltraG), a LightWave 2100, or get her an Eternalight Ergo Marine or EliteMax. The 3 are AAs, all 3 have insane runtimes (the Eternalight even more so), and they're quite reliable.

Checkout our run-time graphs at:

http://www.inretech.net/batlife.htm

Here's more runtime graphs:

http://thelightsite.cruxial.com/reviews/runtimes_archive/runtimes.html

Interestingly it shows the Infinity Ultra crapping out after about 12 hours on an alkaline, about half what the manufacturer claims. I did my own test and found it ran that long on a NiMH charge, but had dimmed considerably toward the end.

As mentioned if you can get cheap zinc-carbon cells in-country, they should run an Infinity or Infinity Ultra without much problem. They'd probably have trouble running anything with a Luxeon for long.

You might consider a CMG Infinity with the turquoise LED. It's significantly brighter then the white LED, with the same runtime. I had both, and found that for most uses, I preferred the brighter light of the turquoise LED. For outdoors use, especially, the turquoise LED is really superior to the white LED, IMHO.

I have to ask, is it really the case that cheap zinc-carbon AA cells are plentiful in Africa, but D cells are not? I can understand about AAA's, which were uncommon even in the USA not all that long ago. But back then, most flashlights and other stuff here ran on D cells, since zinc-carbon AA's just weren't strong enough to light much of anything up for long.

Maybe a simple solution is a PR2 LED lamp in a cheap two-D-cell light:

http://www.techass.com/el/versalux/pr2/pr2.php

I live in the country without grid power, semi-rugged treatment of any light my children or I carry. I have many children using different LED lights. I'd recomend the Ultra for durability and useable light. I'd also recomend a back-up (or more) stored someplace she can trust. The brinkmann long life is good but not as durrable or handy to carry.
I don't have one but the PT Impact or the Lightwave 2100 might be good back ups also

Hmm.

Low light:

As others have suggested, a CMG Infiniti Ultra or CMG Infiniti standard. I'd be inclined to go with the Ultra, mostly because it tends to be more globaly useful, even though there is a bit of risk that you might want the longer runtime of the standard. I'd probably suggest (as others) to wear it on a lanyard.

Task/work light:

This is a bit harder. I think the optimal solution here is a LS based light, but the best LS based lights are 123A cell based. Maybe a Arc LS with the 2AA pack. Other options might be a BadBoy/MadMax in a Maglite, but that might be more moving parts than you would want. Maybe a Streamlight 4AA LED.

Bright light:

UK 4AA, UK Mini Q40, Streamlight 4AA, PT Tech 40.

-john

The Inretech AA adapter is a dropin adapter for the AA Minimag that will give usable light for a long time. It also allows the use of the stock Minimag bulb if necessary. The Opaled Newbeam would be good but does modify the Minimag (take out part of the switch). I would vote for a CMG ultra AND a modded Minimag. Anything too exotic or hi-tech looking might sprout feet and walk away!

I think where these lights are going, an AA minimag is high tech and exotic! The basic flashlight there is going to be a plastic POS.