keithhr
Flashlight Enthusiast
I wrote to Don telling him that all of the options he offers, although nice to have , are daunting to decipher. Below is the response he made to me that I thought I should share for others in the same position.
"I understand and agree with the difficulty of trying to make it clear as to what the heck is what with so many possible combinations! I intentionally locked the price list thread so it wouldn't get to be a mess with follow up posts, both on and off topic. Because of this, I started the Q&A thread hoping it could serve those with questions as to how to order or "is this what I want". Unfortunately this thread has not been used for its intended purpose. Arghhhhhhh
The whole thing is a bit premature in the sense that I don't have all of the Aleph parts yet and there are a couple new converters soon to be available that I am not at the liberty to discuss to any real extent. As soon as I can, I plan to make a few versions of lights that I think make sense and offer them for sale with just a brief description of what they do. This should allow some people to get a light without feeling they need to understand it, inside and out!
What you want is an Aleph1-1x123 with tritium vial in the tail cap. Now here's the catch. If you would want a light that has good output and good runtime without being the absolute brightest it could be, I would suggest a BB500 driver and I can build this immediately for you. If you want the high level to be at max, your current solution would be a BB700 which really doesn't get the full 700 mA to the LED and it is working so hard that it is inefficient and you will only get about 600+ mA to the LED and have a regulated run time in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 minutes. The B500 would give you about an hour. If you want the highest possible, you should wait until I have some "NextGen" drivers which can drive the LED at around 750 mA and give you close to 1 hour of run time. I don't have an exact ETA on these drivers but expect they could be up to a month away.
This is what I had that night that you checked out. I think the NextGen will end up being the most popular driver for the 1x123 format because most people want max brightness; especially when they still get the low level as an alternative. I expect some people will be more sensible and choose to go with a BB400 or BB500; especially if they plan to use the light in high for any extended periods of running. the BB400. If you would like a slightly brighter high level, go with the BB500.
Ironically, your questions and comments here as well as my responses are what I had hoped would appear on the Q&A forum so they could be expressed once for all to read! I was hopeful that the McGizmo Forum could do a better job of informing interested parties while at the same time reducing my time at the computer keyboard! Duh!
"I understand and agree with the difficulty of trying to make it clear as to what the heck is what with so many possible combinations! I intentionally locked the price list thread so it wouldn't get to be a mess with follow up posts, both on and off topic. Because of this, I started the Q&A thread hoping it could serve those with questions as to how to order or "is this what I want". Unfortunately this thread has not been used for its intended purpose. Arghhhhhhh
The whole thing is a bit premature in the sense that I don't have all of the Aleph parts yet and there are a couple new converters soon to be available that I am not at the liberty to discuss to any real extent. As soon as I can, I plan to make a few versions of lights that I think make sense and offer them for sale with just a brief description of what they do. This should allow some people to get a light without feeling they need to understand it, inside and out!
What you want is an Aleph1-1x123 with tritium vial in the tail cap. Now here's the catch. If you would want a light that has good output and good runtime without being the absolute brightest it could be, I would suggest a BB500 driver and I can build this immediately for you. If you want the high level to be at max, your current solution would be a BB700 which really doesn't get the full 700 mA to the LED and it is working so hard that it is inefficient and you will only get about 600+ mA to the LED and have a regulated run time in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 minutes. The B500 would give you about an hour. If you want the highest possible, you should wait until I have some "NextGen" drivers which can drive the LED at around 750 mA and give you close to 1 hour of run time. I don't have an exact ETA on these drivers but expect they could be up to a month away.
This is what I had that night that you checked out. I think the NextGen will end up being the most popular driver for the 1x123 format because most people want max brightness; especially when they still get the low level as an alternative. I expect some people will be more sensible and choose to go with a BB400 or BB500; especially if they plan to use the light in high for any extended periods of running. the BB400. If you would like a slightly brighter high level, go with the BB500.
Ironically, your questions and comments here as well as my responses are what I had hoped would appear on the Q&A forum so they could be expressed once for all to read! I was hopeful that the McGizmo Forum could do a better job of informing interested parties while at the same time reducing my time at the computer keyboard! Duh!