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Roger11 said:
Thanks for all the replies.
The flashlight will be mostly used on industrial inspections of NASA test stands. These have steel frames with grated floors and oftern concrete walls. Weight and bulk need to be kept to a minimum. We carry digital cameras and recorder. The light is also used in the photos. Alot of it is climbing in narrow places, mostly looking at the condition of steel. One thing I did not realize is the heat. Hopefully they cool down quick enough to put back in holster. Longest continual single run time would be a minute max at any one use.
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OK, adding this additional information helps. You want to carry this in a holster, which I think would eliminate the PT Surge. It otherwise is the brightest light that runs on AA's. You want to stay with AA's because you get them for free, which eliminates all the CR123A type lights, which in general can be very bright and compact and light. You haven't mentioned reliability. Does it make a difference if the light "goes dark" right in the middle of an inspection? If so, then LED is the way to go, with its multi-thousand-hour life (depending on type). That leaves the question of whether you have to have a "off the shelf" stock light or are willing to do the 3 minutes of work necessary to turn a minimag (which you like) into a bright, reliable, AA using instrument.
If so, then the MadMax minimag modules really seem the way to go. If you are only going to use the light one minute at a time, then I would not think that heat build up is going to be an issue. Instead, think about the distance from the light that you want to see details. Is this going to be 10 feet, 25 feet, 100 feet? What I am getting at is, do you really need the brightest possible light in the AA minimag format, or would something else serve the purpose?
Do you have any other larger lights that you use that have the kind of light output that you would consider acceptable for this task? If so, maybe you could mention them so that a recommendation for a 2 AA format that gives the same output could be developed.