Help out a newbie

I received a Pelican L1 and a Brinkmann Rebel (4 LED) for christmas and now I'm seriously addicted to LEDs. I am glad I found this place and I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one with a Flash Light fetish.

I have been sifting through the posts on this sight and there is a ton of amazing info here. I'm really interested in the Mag light Conversions and I eventually want to build my own Luxeon III or V monster.

But first I would like to buy a Medium to large LED flash light. Here are the characteristics I would like:
- a Luxeon V preffered or a Luxeon III
- the ability to focus the beam down to a tiny spot (like the mag conversions)
- I would preffer C or D cell batteries, CR123's are pretty $$$, I want guilt free lumens /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
- I would also like a decent run time and the ability for running at a reduced power level Lo/Hi switch.

Does anyone have any good suggestions?

So far I'm interested in the Tri-Star-Phaser or a Good Mag conversion.

C/D batteries and Luxeons will limit your choices. Elektrolumens makes several models but the easiest thing would be to have 3rd_shift build what you want.

Also note that there are a lot of good Luxeons like the Pelican M6 LED that can be bought for a good price by CPF members from batterystation.com. They discount their CR123 batteries a lot also so the cost of the Lithium batteries becomes much less of an issue.

Another option to cut battery costs is a AA light used with NiMH's, such as the Streamlight Jr Luxeon or the Gerber LX 3.0. I think there are some plastic 4AA lights that have good output.

Along with reading this site you'll want to do some research on flashlightreviews.com and ledmuseum.org.

There are also the Pila lights that have the rechargable batteries, and there are some rechargable 123a batteries that are on the market also.
Welcome to CPF!!!



Blades