I saw a thread for brightest budget light, but I thought I would ask something more specific. Most of the truly bright flashllights appear to be 18650 powered. Some people don't have the patience to mess with Li-ions or don't want to invest in batteries and chargers exclusively for flashlights. Personally, I want to add something substantially brighter than the 170 continuous lumens my Fenix LD20 puts out to my wish list. It seems like in the Nimh powered category, to get really bright, you have to fork out some dough for the ITP A6, Fenix TK40, LED Lenser X21, or the expensive mag drop-ins. So what's out there?
So far, I see that Solarforce now has an XP-G R5 version of L2i. I know the R2 version can do at least 180 lumens on 3xAAA, so I wonder if the R5 will make a substantial difference. 3xAAA is not a preferred format.
I also saw that Don lego-ed a 3xAA version of the C3. How difficult would it be to put this together? Is it a straight lego or will it require some modding?
What other options are out there? And lets go by close to accurate output figures. Not the crapola numbers that the HK sites use.
The 3AA C3 is possible but did require fiddling. Start with a 2AA C3 - the new grey one unless you want to have to tear out all your hair in frustration.
Then get an extension tube for a C3 from DX. This will be for the older, lower quality C3. Then fiddle a bit to get it to make contact - the new C3 is very, very much nicer than the old and the parts are not really interchangeable without some fiddling.
The adjudicator for the runtime test is trying to climb into my lap which is painful as she weighs 50kg so i'd better take her for a walk before it gets dark.
I think it is time to work out a more permanent fix for the old C3s as the one in this runtime test is flickering like crazy and needs to be dropped on the floor every minute or two to make it light up again. It may be able to emit light for a surprisingly long time as it keeps turning itself off.
Don - Do you think you could buy 2 of the new C3's and lego the extension from the 2nd on to the first to create one 3xaa and one 1xaa? Since I assume the threads would then be compatible, would that then eliminate the contact issues? Its more expensive but you would still end up with two lights.
That ought to work, and work very well. And will give you two lights. I've always liked C3's, perverse person that I am, but the new ones are actually pretty impressive lights. You ought to get over 200 lumens with 3 AA NiMH.
Ultrafire C3 Grey Q53AA NiMH 234209194 - lumens at 0, 30, 120 seconds. You might well beat those numbers as there ought to be no contact issues at all.