On my Xeno EO3 I was told by the seller to put the bezel end on the bottom of my tennis shoe, and turn the light counter clockwise. It wasn't easy, I really cranked on it and eventually it came loose.
Harry, how's the built of the G42 vs your Thrunite Catapult V3 specifically? The gun metal nice?
I'm looking at the F42 neutral, same weight but less aggressiveness, and a good 25 bucks cheaper. I think that one is brown, i never had a brown "gunmetal" kinda flashlight.
i find that xeno build quality is superb, it even uses brass on its tail cap instead of aluminium. the finishing is marvelous. comes with coated glass lens.
it is flawless. I consider xeno G10 and G42 as a non budget flashlight. The only problem is the ouput.
As for catapult v3, the thickness of its body tube that surprised me, it has a thick aluminium body. You can feel the weight when you holding it. anodizing is perfect. However, the body has sharp edges texture. Overall quality is excellent
I compared catapult quality against trustfire tr3t6, x8 and x9. None of these trustfires quality come close to catapult.
The F42/G42 is listed as 248g. That is EXTREMELY heavy for a 160mm 40-42mm reflector class light (eg Ultrafire C8, U80, 980L).
Output, not that bad what.... 2.2A drive. BTW 2.2A - 3A drive yields just a little bit of output.
Yo bro, let me recommend you the LED-CALC.xls which you can get from here (budgetlightforum)
2.2A -> 3A gives you 74 more lumens.G42 drives the LED at 2.2A, it’s rated 535 lumens and that is probably OTF (Out the front). With so much mass I am sure it can maintain that figure easily for a while.Without testing, I think it might be more on my meter, ie it is pretty conservative for 2.2A even factoring driver losses.