Challenge Week #3: Throwers Only! Got Throw??

[Dark Attic Works]

Sure. On high it has a pretty broad, conical shaped beam where the medium has a good throw without all of the spill. On low it tosses a beam forward with enough spill that keeps me from goose stepping into furniture.


The specs.


What the burglar sees on low.


Up close spot vs spill on low at 1 foot.

Thanks! That looks great. A worthy companion.

[bykfixer]

Woke up at 4:30 and began to groggily feel around for a night stand flashlight. Then next thought was "flashlight challenge week, oh crap which one?" "incan? No, um E? Nope, tosser week".
Then I discovered I had left the Manker T01 next to the Elzetta AA so I went for the Manker.

[theinvisibleman]

How about a torch that can throw at HOT spot 75-100 yards away?

[Stress_Test]

Heh heh. My new drop-in for the Maglite arrived just in time for this challenge

It is the "LiteXpress LXB430 2Mode LED" for 2-cell Mags, C and D models. Rated at 430 / 40 lumens. 18 bucks, made in Germany.

These PR replacements pretty much look the same, but the hold-down ring on this thing is aluminum (for better heat-sinking maybe?)

I have no idea what LED this might be. The dome is actually clear, but it reflects the die surface all through it. No visible bond wires in the LED die itself, like you see on an XM-L, for example.



Sooo, this is thrower week, but a Mag can be flood and throw both... hmmm. Also, the beam tends to be ugly when in full throw mode.... hmm, what to do?? If only there was an easy way to change the beam profile...

Oh look, here's the old Task Force 2C light that came with a TIR lens!



The lens is screwed into the aluminum bezel; maybe it could be removed with the right tool? Doesn't matter though for what I've got in mind. (wish I had gotten a better photo; it's tough photographing a clear piece of plastic surrounded by shiny aluminum!)

So, let's just take the reflector out of the 2C Mag, install the new drop-in, balance the TIR lens on top if it, then screw the head assembly back in place! The head can screw all the way down, and the spring-loaded action of the bulb tower holds the TIR optic in place against the Mag lens. It's a bit loose; it can be knocked off center a bit, but a whack or two against the palm will re-center it.

Shown next to my Quark Turbo-X Neutral (XM-L running a 16650 Li-ion)



From the outside you don't notice anything different unless you look in the lens.




And now, beamshot comparison! The Turbo-X is rated something like 400 lumens I think?? (left side) I don't know if anyone measured one of these for sure. The right side is the Mag, on two white-wrap Eneloops, that were about 1.35v each. Current draw started at 1.6 amps, then decreased slowly to about 1.4A and staying mostly steady. Hard to say if that was battery sag, or if the module was heating. The package states "temperature controlled" so presumably there's some protection there.



I know it's hard to tell from the photo, but the Mag hotspot was just a little less bright (verified with the pixel brightness values in a photo editor). The Mag's hotspot is bigger though. However, the Turbo-X has brighter spill. That TIR optic seems very efficient at sending most of the output into a center beam and not losing much to side spill. The Turbo-X is brighter overall but I could still believe that the LiteXpress drop-in is still putting out 300+ lumens.

Not bad!!

[bykfixer]

The worlds premier of a whak-a-palm Maglite.
Another first, only here at CPF.

Got out the Pelican 2390 and my gosh……Raining cats and dogs but it was never this fun getting soaked by 45 degree rain.


Before
Plenty of free lumens in my area.


The neighbors shed


The Manker T01 on high using a Rayovac.
Hard to imagine a 1aa light tossing a beam like that using a plain vanilla battery but there it was.

I remembered why I put the T01 on a shelf. It loses low mode at times or gets stuck in some kind of rescue mode where it flashes in strobe, sos and and beacon mode. This evening it was stuck in rescue mode for a while and following instructions I was able to get it into some kind of hidden modes. After a while I changed batteries and it operated normal. Put back battery I was using and again acting normal.
Weird.

[CanAm]

I'm joining the mag club for this one with a 2d Ml300. So far so good...

[Stress_Test]

The worlds premier of a whak-a-palm Maglite.
Another first, only here at CPF.

............

Well sort of... the whack-a-palm description normally means you have to do that to make the light work again. The TIR/Mag combo doesn't quit working or anything if the lens slides out of place a bit. It can only go so far before it bumps the LED dome and stops. It turns out the alignment of lens to LED isn't as critical as I thought.

If I wanted a more robust install, I'd try some kind of low-strength, soft adhesive like caulk, or maybe RTV, to hold the TIR lens.

It does have the disadvantage of still having to shoot through the stock Mag plastic lens, so that's causing some lumen loss. And by the way, the 40 lumen low mode has bad (slow) pulse-width-modulation; ugh. I'd only be using that in a pinch, I think.

By the way, you must have very understanding neighbors to be able to shine your lights around like that without causing trouble!

[bykfixer]

That neighbor is a flashaholic too. Well so long as the flashlight is $35 or less. He has dozens of $15-25 lights.

If you decide to go permanent with your Mag-mod flashlight lens dot com has some ultraclear acrylic numbers already cut for Maglites.

[Stress_Test]

Is anyone seeing messed up font sizes in the text of my last post with the photos?? It looks okay when I'm logged in, but when I'm not signed in, there are several lines that are different sized text... not sure what is going on there!

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Is anyone seeing messed up font sizes in the text of my last post with the photos?? It looks okay when I'm logged in, but when I'm not signed in, there are several lines that are different sized text... not sure what is going on there!

Try editing those comments, selecting the wonky text and selecting 3 in the "size" hotbar above.

I noticed but thought it was intended, so I said nothing about it.

[Stress_Test]

Okay, I think I may have it fixed. I just did a "select all" for the text in the post, then tried a few different sizes. A font size of "1" looks like it matches everyone else's text.

I've seen this bug before; I think it's something about when I paste in text off a website or other document.

It's really weird though that I only see the error when I'm logged out.

Definitely not intentional; I saw the problem and thought oh great, now I look like a goober that can't figure out text formatting!

[bykfixer]

I've seen other peoples posts do the same thing ST.

My chrome used to do weird stuff like pinch sentences and words really close. Like I'd just written a really long sentence "somethinglikethis"…… in my reasons for edit slot I'd put in word pinch.

All throwers this week so far. I even left the water bottle cap cover for my PKDL PR-1 work light at home so far. But the one time I needed a flashlight at work I had a gen 1 Pelican 2350 in my jacket pocket. 100 lumens with 19,000cd.

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Compared to challenge #2, this is easy so far. More fun, too, as I have options to fiddle with when bored and no fear of running the battery low

Ironically, the torch I'm carrying the most is the C8. It's got the bulkiest form factor for pocket carry and the ugliest tint of the 3, and even so I can't keep it off my hands. Maybe it's the heft of the host that feels good in the hand, maybe it's the nostalgia of it being my very first thrower (and very first Convoy).

[bykfixer]

A new pair of shoes arrived today. I like to shine a light inside to look for the way things are constructed and these have a white canvas lining throughout. I shined my Pelican 2390 thrower down into the shoe and GOOD GOSH!! It was not much unlike looking at the sun. Spots galore after sending 180 throwers into a tiny white cave.

[Dark Attic Works]

bykfixer, I'm with you on enjoying the Pelican lights! I have a 2nd gen 2350 that I really like. Totally underrated IMO.

I had a new light arrive today and luckily it's a thrower so I'm able to use it! Surefire EB1 Backup with the gas pedal switch. Heaven!

[Stress_Test]

.....

If you decide to go permanent with your Mag-mod flashlight lens dot com has some ultraclear acrylic numbers already cut for Maglites.

Thanks, I'd forgotten about them. I'll probably put the Mag back to stock so that the Task Force light can get its lens back. Fun to mess around for a little bit though.

I did discover that the LiteExpress drop-in has a pretty severe ramp down during the first 12 to 15 minutes or so. By 20 or 30 minutes it's really not much brighter than the old "1-watt" Nite-Ize drop-in that I've had for years. So that's kind of a bummer. It can be restored back to the initial brightness by cycling it on/off again, but still, I probably wouldn't have got it if I had known. One of the comments on Amazon said it best, that basically it's not cost-effective when you can get a whole new Maglite for a little more money (now that they have stepped up their game).

I took it to work today and used it in some dark basement storage areas. At longer ranges the beam fans out a little more than I'd have thought, but it's still a good medium range thrower.

Start--------------------------------------------------------------->> 10 minutes later




20 minutes later

[bykfixer]

Wow! That's a jump down……

Enjoy that 2nd gen 2350 DAW. That was a nice upgrade.

[idleprocess]

Circumstances today favored expedience, thus I used the immediately-available Emisar D1 for dog-walking duty. Mercifully the mutts' leavings weren't on leaves and we're easy to locate; using a tight beam to sweep an area would have been akin to looking at Google Maps through a straw.

[Katherine Alicia]

I`m not sure if I`m technically in or out now? I`v done a few light mods today and they weren`t technically pure throwers. so I don`t know if that`s allowed or not, but I do get lights in to mod quite often and as a wife/mother have to take advantage of whatever free time I get to do that work in.

I`ll leave it to you guys

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

I`m not sure if I`m technically in or out now? I`v done a few light mods today and they weren`t technically pure throwers. so I don`t know if that`s allowed or not, but I do get lights in to mod quite often and as a wife/mother have to take advantage of whatever free time I get to do that work in.

I`ll leave it to you guys

Nothing against it myself. You're testing your mods, not using the lights.

[bykfixer]

Needed to see about 150 feet inside an 18" concrete pipe, looking for flaws. Enter the thrower. My normal everyday carry 500 lumen work light would not have reached that far into a pipe without all of the spill flashing back in my face from the bright white inside of the pipe. So the sub 200 lumen thrower Maglite ML25 did the trick.

Edit: at 3:30am I heard a "thump" and grabbed the MankerT01, which prompted low. My goodness that little thing threw a nice narrow but dim beam end to end of my house. The spot hit a mirror in my living room and suddenly the entire room was visible enough to see that for whatever reason Mrs Fixers car keys had fallen from a shelf to the floor. Perhaps it was the attached flashlight that made the "thump" sound?
End edit

[bykfixer]

Welp, I made it a whole week with nothing but throwers. I blinded myself a few times using a strong beam close up but that's part of what made it a challenge, right? Plus it was fun using some kinda early LED technology.

[Stress_Test]

..... for whatever reason Mrs Fixers car keys had fallen from a shelf to the floor. Perhaps it was the attached flashlight that made the "thump" sound?
End edit

Ghosts maybe???

This week motivated me to finally work out a solution for the old Task Force light to let it use AA in adapters rather than two C. Just had to add a second spring inside the tail end, to mash the adapters far enough into the forward spring so that the AA + end contacted the spring center point to complete the circuit. (the forward spring by itself is too wide to connect to AA cells)

Today I've been looking at LEDs pre-mounted on 20mm stars and thinking about swapping the existing Task Force star for an XP-G2 or maybe an XP-L, if I can find some kind of spanner tool to unscrew the ring that's holding everything in.

Also this week reminded me how much I enjoy the old Fenix TK20 neutral light. Color and tint are highly subjective, of course, but the color temp for me is a perfect warm-sunlight kind of look that I always enjoy. I like it better than some of my other supposedly "high CRI" lights, some of which have weird tint.

The TK20 has a 45 lumen low mode, and the hotspot is so small at close range you just use the spill instead. Not a problem at all! I gotta start using that light on a regular basis again.

[bykfixer]

Hopefull a ghost named Casper if so stress test.

Got any other ideas cookin' or just take a little break between challenges?

[Stress_Test]

Got any other ideas cookin' or just take a little break between challenges?

I'm thinking one-week hiatus to give everyone a chance to mess with lights that have been neglected for a while. After three challenge weeks back-to-back it's probably time for a break.

I do have one or two more ideas though

[Katherine Alicia]

well I for one will most certainly welcome a break, it`ll give me chance to try out some of my new lights and mods that I`v been wanting to try for the last 3 weeks
I`m looking forwards to reading what the next 2 challenges are going to be though, the suspense is getting to me already! LOL

[bykfixer]

I'm thinking one-week hiatus to give everyone a chance to mess with lights that have been neglected for a while. After three challenge weeks back-to-back it's probably time for a break.

I do have one or two more ideas though

Last evening Mrs Fixer asked if I had a flashlight handy as she was looking for something under the bed. My brain went into "challenge?, oh right that ended at sundown" and grabbed a Sofirn C01 from the nightstand. Turns out she was looking for her C01.

So yeah it'll be nice to be in freestyle mode for a bit, yet these challenges cause me to appreciate how diverse my flashlight quiver is too.

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Aaaaaand done! It's Sunday 4PM and so I wrap up my second challenge!

Compared to last week's, this was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. Going from one single 1xAAA to a trio of 1x18650s to choose from is the equivalent of leaving a sleeping bag to sleep on top of a Russian stove. Even had a choice of tint Even if I did mostly carry the ugliest tinted of the bunch half the time...

Incidentally, this has rekindled my interest in getting a Convoy C8+ in a nice warm tint. I say an XP-L HI in 4000-ish K is in order next time I have the money to splurge a bit

[LeanBurn]

I don't know what happened but the whole week went by and I think I used my flashlight once. For whatever reason I wasn't in situations where I could use a flashlight.

Oh well.

[bigburly912]

I said I was out on this one but I didn’t have a single piece of equipment to inspect at work and the only light I used all week was my mag ML300lx so technically I guess I completed this one haha