Amazon experience

LED Flashlights – General Info
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Just some observations from a recent trip to the Peruvian Amazon basin.

Flashlights are extremely critical to have. It gets really dark really fast. For an urban person like me, it’s an interesting experience to say the least. The moon and the stars can’t be seen due to the trees and foliage and walking even a few steps would have been impossible. No lights equals a very dire and dangerous situation.

A good light along with a good backup is the bare minimum to have in my opinion. For me more is better so I always had 4 lights for night and predawn hikes…ZL SC52w, Convoy S2, Trustfire Z2, and Tank007 E09. Lights can be lost or fail, or batteries drained, but I figured the odds of that happening 4 times in 1 hike were pretty much zero.

Headlights are good but they have the disadvantage of blinding other people when talking to them and there’s only light where you look. I found that a floody headlight and a handheld flashlight worked the best. I had the ZL SC52w on a headband and a Convoy S2 in the hand. The T5-5C tint on the Convoy really made things stand out.

Any light is bright when it’s pitch black. My wife and kids had on the cheap Costco headlights and they were sufficient for walking around at night. But my youngest also had my Shiningbeam Spark with the 1 AA tube and AW14500 in it. I was always walking behind them with the Convoy lighting the path so they were able to get by just with the Costco lights.

250 to 300 lumens is more than sufficient for night hikes. But even 30 lumens or so would have allowed for safe hikes.

Runtime is way, way more important than lumens in the jungle. However our guide was impressed with the ZL and Convoy :slight_smile:

Some people aren’t very smart at all. A couple in our group (us 4, the couple, and the guide) didn’t have a working light. I lent her my Tank the first night but he was too macho to let her keep using it. Lucky for them they could walk in the middle of the group and see with the lighting that we provided.

My family always laughed at me for having more lights than I needed (in their opinion). But….they laugh no more :slight_smile: And my youngest took my Spark back to college with her :frowning:

The most important light emitting device I had was a Steripen UV water sterilizer. This allowed us to get safe drinking water anywhere there was a supply of water. This can’t be overstated and it actually saved us about $150 (over having to buy bottle water, which may have been bad anyway). I’m impressed enough by it that I’m going to get another one to back in my earthquake supplies. The one I carried takes 4 NiMH batteries so I didn’t have to worry about charging it (I took 12 spare batteries with me). Oh, and my family laughed when I took it with me but, as the with flashlights, they came to see the light :slight_smile:

We’re off to Uganda in December and I’m thinking of taking my Shiningbeam Caveman and Fenix E21 in place of the Convoy and Trustfire. That way all I need to carry are AA’s and AAA’s. Plus the runtimes are much better with those lights.

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I found a trick for this, but it might only work with a Fenix HP10. The diffuser wand fits perfectly on the bezel of the HP10, which spreads out the light enough that it's not blinding. It looks silly, but works great for a group since it lights their faces without blinding them...really nice when that group is full of strangers.



Usually I don't care for this device, especially since viruses aren't a concern where I backpack, but I would definitely want this.

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Sounds like a great adventure, I’ve had similar experiences too: the same people making fun of your lights and then showing up for an extended outing with no lights, and no water and wanting to use yours. I know you mean to limit to just AA and AAA, I would rather limit to just 18650 if possible so I was curious about Steripen models that could use it. Several seem to run on CR123x2 and 4xAA but dont list 18650…seems you could use one if 4xAA is OK

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I had diffuser film on the ZL but it definitely wasn’t good enough. The diffuser wand would have worked out much better. Viruses were a concern of mine just because they’re so prevalent now. Plus the Steripen is smaller than a decent filter. I got a Katadyn Pocket Water Microfilter (supposedly one of the best and smallest) for my daughter in Uganda, but she finds the Steripen more useful.

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From what I’ve seen they just have the AA, CR123, and internal lithium models. For my purposes the AA model offered the most flexibility. I didn’t care for the internal lithium model since I couldn’t swap batteries in the field.

People are amazing in how they think people will take care of them in times of need. And even after a bad experience most still don’t learn from it.

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Just a word of caution on the Steri Pens. We have been using them professionally since they started (always the 4XAA cell models). While they are convenient, they are prone to a very high failure rate. They have been very good about repairing them, but some of those failures in the field did leave us forced to consume suspicious water and one resulting bout of giardia until we smartened up and added the weight of a backup, preferable a manual pump system. Also Steri Pen does not work reliably on turbid water.

You mentioned ZL early in the post, then a Spark, do you use both? We had to use our Sparks just last night for about 7 kilometers of dark, and a stage of 900m of vertical descent. I always use an ST6 on my head, and an SD6 with flood lens on my hip belt for better footing on descent, and an accessible SL6 for peripheral stuff. All are NW tints, but plan to go to a T4 for better results doing patient assessments in the dark (for such things as assessing cap refill, cyanosis, etc.)

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What do you do? Yes I realize it doesnt work in turbid water, and I hope for no problems, but iodine tabs is the backup just in case. I was hoping a Steripen could use an 18650, but if it takes CR123 and 4xAA, it seems 2 x 14500 should do alright if an 18650 wont…

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Mostly I just daydream about retiring some day soon, in the meantime work in a specialist position as a civil servant.

Being as I still use the Steri Pen (on average 2-3 days every week) I also would really like it if I could use 18650 as well. As it seems to work OK on Lithium primary cells, 2x14500 should also be just fine. I hadn’t thought of that until you mentioned it, but as I already am doing that with my VHF radio and my Spark headlamp, it would make sense to do it as well with the Steri Pen. As I just got in the door from work, I decided to try some protected Nitecore cells in a Steri Pen, and just like my VHF radio, they do not fit. So that has us going back to the unprotected cells as the only option. I’ve been using the Sanyo UR14500P from FT so far. They are expensive, and I have never had the good fortune to visit the Amazon, but if I did, I suspect I’d want the best cells possible. If money were not the primary concern, perhaps there is an even better 14500 cell?

BTW, also just yesterday, due to the heat, the glacier fed outwash we had, had so much silt it was the color of cement (it was a hot day). In the end I had to hike back to a little spring that was literally dripping and place my 500ml nalgene bottle under it and wait for the drips to fill it, which took about 10 minutes, the whole time it was getting dark. I had to do that 3 times to get enough minimum water for us to go another 2-3 hours. While I hate having to pump those MSR manual pumps (that filter glacial silt very well), there was one example where you can imagine what I was thinking while I impatiently watched the growing twilight while balancing on slippery rocks just wanting to get going. In the end I had to content myself with pulling out my phone and playing some Chicane, that helped. The founder of Steri Pen, Miles, is a great guy and a genius to boot. He is kind and he likes cats. But I suspect the product line itself gained momentum like a snowball creating an avalanche and it has gotten away from him.

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I have read about Steripens failing so I had iodine pills as a backup for our trip. Of course the problem with the pills is that the treatment time varies depending on the temperature. 0.2 micron water filters are fine for treating bacteria and protozoa but aren’t effective against viruses. So I would still treat the water with iodine, chlorine, or chlorine dioxide. Maybe tincture of iodine plus vitamin C since it’s cheaper. I plan to bring 2 Steripens as well as chemicals on our December trip. I have a prefilter to use in case the water is turbid, plus coffee filters.

What failure rates are you experiencing with the Steripens? I was concerned about mine failing but it worked fine for our 2 week trip. Plus my daughter has been using one daily for 4 months and has had no issues. Hopefully quality control has improved over time.

I had a ZL on a headband and a Convoy S2 in hand. The combination worked well since I had both flood and throw. When I needed to use both hands I holstered the Convoy and was able to get by with the ZL. The Spark was a Shiningbeam Spark, with a 1 AA tube and a 14500 in it. Probably a 250 lumen light but it has decent throw which my youngest used in conjunction with a cheap Costco headlight. The Convoy is a T5 and the tint was way better for making things out in the jungle.

I was thinking I should have clipped my Trustfire Z2 to to my backpack facing behind me to scare the animals away :slight_smile:

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Coffee filters or the pre-filter that Steripen sells will usually clear the water for you. Maybe 2 14500’s with 2 dummies would work but would one get anymore flashes than using 4 NiMH’s?

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I guess that given enough time, every Steri Pen I’ve had has failed, so it’s 100% failure rate. But it is usually into the second year of using them. Main problems have been cracking end caps which fail to hold the batteries with enough tension. The steri pens draw a fair bit of current so it has to be tight apparently. Maybe we need to measure the tailcap draw on them?

I had one that developed condensation in the tube, and then it failed. I’ve had a couple of others that gave me warning, the green light started to go error red state, and then you could get it to do a bottle. Eventually they all failed after doing that however. Had another sitting on the counter top in a cabin and it got knocked over and broke, my fault, but there we were again with having to boil our water.

I have wondered about the possibility of a flashaholic to build their own? Apparently 200 to around 275nm is required to kill off bacteria, with a 254nm emitter being about right. So would it be possible to find some IPX8 rated host, and put a UV Emitter in it that produces the right wavelength? I know just the stream we can test it on, I saw 8 mountain sheep standing an pooping in it a few hours ago.

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I used 4 Eneloops in my Steripen and had nary a problem. According to Steripen one can get 200 flashes from the primaries but I’m not sure how many on NiMH’s. I changed them out every 3rd day even though I didn’t get any low battery readings (about 30 flashes). Perhaps I was overly cautious but I had plenty of spare batteries :slight_smile:

After visiting the Amazon I can tell you that money is no object when it comes to safety, etc. It’s not that much more expensive to have better equipment (compared to the price of going there), and the potential consequences are rather large. Which is why I’m carrying 2 Steripens our next trip as well getting better lights (not that Shiningbeam’s, Convoy’s, or ZL’s are bad). But it’s a good excuse to use on my wife :slight_smile:

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It becomes a slow tedious process, the filters clog really fast. That’s why putting your muscle power into a pump is much more effective.

In my world, where I shave my armpits and toothbrush to save weight, more flashes mean nothing:

-Steripen with NiMh cells, total weight: 211.4g
-Steripen with the Sanyo cells and 2 dummies: 145.8g.

That weight difference is significant to me, but becomes even more significant when you consider if I use NiMh in my VHF radio, I get 4 watts, but if I use Li-Ion I get 5.5 watts at 164.9 mHz. That one point five watt could mean the difference between life and death. Plus I can swap the batteries out between devices as you will not need to use your steri pen and VHF radio at the same time.

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Yeah thats what I was thinking, we could probably build something cheaper…but who would want to test the water after? It would have to be overpowered to compensate, and then we get to worry about giving ourselves skin cancer. Not sure how much emitters cost in that range though. Sure would be nice to have an 18650 one though so I could power my headlamp/main light/backup light/usb powersource/Steripen all from one battery. I currently switch in 26650 lights so I can light the forest for people on hikes (backup can use that too), but I’m talking about light packing days, and then carrying more different cells and chargers on trips would get annoying, so 14500 ameliorates that somewhat by eliminating the charger issue.

Are you backpacking out there watching mountain sheep in the stream right now??

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Hummmm…a 100% failure rate is……high. I’m more concerned about my daughter in Uganda as she’s in a small village and depends heavily on her Steripen. I was going to leave 1 Steripen with her when we visit but perhaps I’ll leave both.

It would seem simple enough to build one. It’s not as if it’s cutting edge technology. Fish tanks have been using UV lights for decades. And they certainly poop in the water :slight_smile:

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Just got off evening shift, on standby tonight, so eating stoned wheat thins, and wondering if I should go to bed, or anticipate being woken up, so perhaps start to watch to watch that Tom Cuise movie with the Russian girl in it. The sheep have probably moved onto the garbage bins at the viewpoint by now….

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Thought I should clarify. I seem to remember reading on Steri Pen’s website that when UV is submerged in water, the UV rays cannot leave the water. That’s why the Steri Pen has a safety feature: a sensor that tells it that it is submersed or it will not activate. However that means it will not activate in really soft water such as snow melt, in which case you have to add a pinch of salt to get it to work. Also, I have had a number of Steri Pens that have surprised me and the lamp has come on before I place it in the water, which is not good. Maybe that’s why I’m now uglier than ever before, the UV got me.

If you built your own, and used it responsibly, you could forgo the need for the sensor I imagine. It would be a pretty good feat for a flashaholic to come up with a cheap DIY LED water purifier, if such a thing were possible. From what I’ve seen if it were, there are a few members of this forum capable of it.

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Well, polycarbonate and many plastics are supposed to block UV, and if the water blocked it, it couldnt sterilize the water, so I’m sure its the plastic blocking it :slight_smile: Yeah I think many COULD build one…but I’d be hyper cautious about both “is it enough dose” and “do I have enough UV shielding with this plastic”…enough to make me not so certain about trying it even if I had a nice workplace setup to work on flashlights.

Ugly from UV? You mean weathered face? Sounds like you are outside all the time in your job, so probably not the steripen doing most of it. Still not clear on what exactly you do out there yet, but maybe thats the intent :wink:

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Good thread…

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Yeah! I thought it was going to be about Amazon.com!!