AA for my 3D mag

Hey guys,

I am looking to upgrade my stock incan 3D mag with (hopefully) some sort of drop-in module like a Malkoff. The tricky part is that I really like sticking with rechargeable NiMH AA's as my fuel. I like the idea of loading 9-AA's into the 3D, as I don't have a charger that can handle D cells. Unfortunately this will push voltage up over 10V.

Right now I am leaning towards just getting the Malkoff 2D/3D drop-in and using alkaline D's (despite my AA love) in it as the run-time is pretty darn good. Would I get decent runtime using the 4/5/6D drop-in with 7 AA's?

Thoughts?

The only reason to use AAs in a Mag at all is to up the voltage in a smaller form factor. An example; I like the 600-lumen output of the TerraLUX TLE-300, but I like to keep my light as small as possible, so I use a 2D host and 6AAs.

For max runtime, skip AAs altogether as they're going to give you less runtime per volume than anything else that will fit in a D cell space; you'd get more runtime from the 2-3D drop-in/2D alkaline setup than you would from the 4-6D drop-in/7AA config.

You could also just get an AA to D converter like this:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.3228

If you really just wanted to stick with AA, though runtime would be short.