Red rag time. Until 2006 I worked for the Church of Scotland. I now work for the NHS doing the same job (as I have done since 1989) in the same place. For less pay.
Politics:
"How do you tell when a politician is lying"
"When their lips are moving"
I remember being totally awestruck by my local MSP's capacity for brandy. He was on his third pint and still coherent at one dinner I got invited to.
Last time I looked tis was a rather international forum ;so why local politics
Ontopic: I ordered one at DX was OK but one of the screws of the pocket clip was smaller and did fall out (strange??!)
non flashaholic Buddies liked it also and I have now a handfull on order (DX)
Offtopic:
Because I felt like it.
/Offtopic
Ontopic:
I have a couple of no-name clones of this light. Like all the flood-zoom lights I've bought I end up not using them much or at all.
You lose 50% of the output at zoom. The best of them loses "only" 40%.
I've bought several of them and most have died or been given away - they aren't a category of light I personally find useful. Others disagree and that's fine - but I won't be buying any more of them.
It is pretty much like me and the Romisen RC-G2. I want to like them but completely fail to do so.
A couple of years ago most of my local council had to be thrown out of a town centre pub for being drunk and disorderly, several of them ended up getting taken away by the police as they kicked up a fuss (Do you know who I am!!). I think I'd pick the high functioning alcoholic over this lot :P
It's not about killing the driver or led yeah that's not cool but my concern is to overdischarge a lithium ion battery purposefully didn't seem like something you wanted to do ..Ask someone smarter than me I'm certainly not mr. wizard here when it comes to batteries .. i just have been warned plenty of times that lithium ion abuse will yield bad bad results ..like fire or explosions if abused ...
This thread has my interest...i'm lusting for this sipik68
yep ...this is a international forum ... it took me 12 minutes just to figure out what a MSP was ... Member /Scottish /Parliment.
I don't feel any smarter ..!
Offtopic:
Because I felt like it.
/Offtopic
Sorry Don, I did not react on you but on a previous poster (post is now gone)
This was my first zoom flashlight and I like it how in the unzoomed mode it trows out a even beam without the hotspot
Often I cannot use my throwers closeby because the hotspot is to bright in comp. with the spill
That fact also renewed my interest in something like the zebralight or the new Ultrafires with headband
Yes, for close-up stuff a very floody light is much more useful - hotspots can become dazzling. I remember having to take the reflector out of a light while working in small, dark spaces. Everything I had with me was too bright for the distances I was working at. This is less common nowadays as I have become rather long-sighted and prefer not to work in tiny spaces.
In most such jobs I needed both hands so a headlamp was the most suitable light for me. The classic example is fiddling with cables at the back of a computer - usually in a brightly lit office, but behind a desk and usually minimal space to work in. Seeing what you are doing does help a lot..
I like the way that a headlamp is pretty much automatically pointing the way you are looking.
+1
Figure your eyesight fifteen years in the future. Your body does'nt even want to access the back of a computer. My situation....
As they say round here, "aul' age disnae come alone." (Old age doesn't arrive unaccompanied)
Yes, I'm less keen on crawling into tiny spaces to fix things I can't see. But these days I am less likely to put a staple through the network cable in the first place. Assuming I can get to them nowadays. Thus far I've been able to get away with reading glasses but that is going to change soon. Or maybe, I'll have saved enough by then to pay someone else to do it. Somehow I doubt that....
is here anyone,who see on the sipik ofificial website email to them?????
I ordered this light from them during that sale. They sent the dark gray instead of black, but I'm OK with it. It does appear to have the Q3 LED in it, since it has the expected beam profile in throw mode (square hotspot with two cut out corners, three parallel rectangle sections in the center of the hotspot, two light rings around the hotspot). Some people were worried it might have an Osram LED in it due to the low price. This was an excellent deal, and very bright with 14500 lithium batteries, though it gets a pretty warm after a few minutes. The zooming head requires a bit of lubrication to be smooth enough for accurate one-handed zooming. As others have said, the tailcap is too smooth, especially if your hands are wet or oily, and it is a single mode, but it tailstands fairly well.
I've had 20 of these of DX now. Not one had any thermal paste under the LED star.
I found on most there was enough wire to lever the LED up and spread some paste under the star with a small flat screwdriver.
Essexman, can you share how you remove the emitter/pill form the SK68 head? I'm worried about just grabbing the pill and forcing it out with pliers, since it might destroy the threads on the pill. Maybe a flat screwdriver between the head and pill to carefully pry it out?
It came out with ease. First unscrew the bezel with the glass lens at the front and remove. Then pull the zoom slid back. The pill has two slots, fix someting across the slots and twist/unscrew. I used a wide metal rule. Once the pill is out you need to remove the metal cover arond the LED, under that will be a plastic cover. Then gently lift the LED.
I got my Sipik SK68 a couple weeks ago and like it a lot. Haven't taken it apart to check for thermal paste because I haven't felt like tearing it up just yet. Heat sinking seems to be very good if there is no paste in it as the entire housing seems to get warm evenly if left on for a couple minutes. I love the heatsinking potential on this torch with the fins and the solid back on the pill under the emitter. In comparison, the classic zoomer, the x2000 (aka c30), has the hollow pill with only the outer edges of the emitter contacting the pill is simply horrible with heat management. Currently the SK68 is my EDC torch.
Call me a noob (might be new here but not to torches) but I still love zoomers especially as EDC lights because of their versatility. Are they as good as a high end dedicated thrower? No, but they are almost as good when you want to reach out and touch someone/something. They kick the snot out of many mid-to-high end throwers without having to light up the entire countryside and making your presence known to all. Are they the best flooders available? While they certainly don't cast as wide a flood as a good flood light, they certainly make up for it in the quality of the circle of light they do cast. Almost zero hotspot with smooth distribution just perfect for working on computers and searching for small items. I find the hotspot most torches have makes them horrible for seaching for small things inside or outside because the hotspot almost obscures anythig you are trying to locate or see clearly. To me anything other than a zoomer is a specialty light and therefore not a versatile EDC torch. A good zoomer is also almost as good as a laser for pointing out stars and other objects in the night sky. Nothing says "Jedi Knight" and wows the crowd like this light. It even looks like a small light saber. 
As for the SK68 in particular, the one thing it definitely lacks is modes. I run 14500 cells in my AA sized torches and without a mid or low option they just put out far too much light and heat with only the 1 mode and run time is greatly reduced. I have a nice 5-mode driver I will be installing in mine soon that will take care of that. It could also use some knurling on the tail cap. While not impossible to open and close, I would certainly feel more secure with it if I could get a better grip on it. Thankfully the threading on mine is nearly perfect. The lense housing moves nicely with not too much friction nor too lose and with very little wobble.
Cheers,
Johnny
Looks like a great light. I would solve the one mode only with QTC pill...
Does anyone know if the seemingly-identical Q5 lights on eBay really are Q5? Example:
This seems otherwise the same as the Sipik SK68 for about the same price delivered. I'd prefer ordering from DX vs. eBay but if I can get a better emitter for the same price then I'd go for it.
I got it, and its a Q5.
It's Q4 according to Sipik themselves and I really doubt they would make custom Q5s for every seller on ebay. So no it's not Q5.