You're right the bolt does look a little 'hokey', but given the large lump of, what I assume to be, glass that has to be held in place and be watertight, I think its probably a good solution. The rest of the unit is entirely thick rubber and appears to be sealed. I see no way into the unit without taking the glass out. The retention ring is at least partly sunk into the rubber housing.
The manual says "contains no user serviceable parts" - this appears to include the lamp assembly.
The switch is small push on/off button on the side of the body which is rubber covered again for water resistance. I imagine that it is intended to be able to be operated in a pair of fire gloves. It requires a lot of pressure to engage and disengage, and if you didn't hear the ballast kick in, you wouldn't really know you had it on, but consequently, it isn't likely to change status if it got knocked over on a rescue scene etc...
With the right portable power source, bag batteries, bottle batteries etc... it makes a perfect S&R light. I tried it quickly the other morning and the beam penetrated about 300 ft into the trees behind our house where new home construction is going on. The spot still seemed brighter than heck even at that distance. Makes me ALMOST wish that I could switch the reflector to a SF style one that would shorten the throw but increase the flood - there is way enough light here to do that...
Interestingly, after being bright white the first few times turned on, I noticed that the beam had a small yellow tint to one part. On turning it off, there appeared to be small yellow liquid in the discharge area of the lamp. Now it seems to be variable whether it shows or not, but this reminded me of some recent fun and games with the X990.
Have fun,
Simon
