Hello!
In case of TL-DR Thanks for all the nice information on this forum, I am a Dutch guy living in south west France in an old watermill, hence the nickname 
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After reading so much on this forum - very helpfull, thanks a lot - I wanted to join you guys.
We moved from Amsterdam to the south west of France coming March two year ago.
We live in an old watermill, the foundations and some parts of the house have been here for about 1000 years (no I did not add a 0 by misstake ;)).
The idea is to build a waterwheel and make our own electricity, but a lot of work needs to be done befaore that happens 
Let me give you a rough idea on why I want some flashlights.
Lets start with an bird eyes view with some lines drawn into them for a general idea of distances:
Green line is 100 meter (sorry, we are kind of used to and fixated on the metric system) and reaches the edge of the neighbours barn.
Red is 50 meter from the place we usually reside in to the corner of the public road that ends at our personal area.
and
green lines represent 20 meter
red is 30 meter
blue is 50 meter
It all started for me when somebody on a Dutch Tech/ICT website worte a series of blogs about flashlights.
The ultra cheap flashlights we have now hardly shine and I use the LED flash of my cell phone a lot.
But it got me thinking, I really need some decent lights.
For example, in the winter, the river runs wild and the waterlevel rises about 1 meter. This results in a millcreek filled with water that runs through our house. This is very nice, romantic and cool, but when a piece of wood get stuck behing the waterlock just beneath the bedroom of my son it bangs against the wooden waterlock and needs to be removed. Murphys law stated this will happen at night and sure it does most of the time.
The water is rushing and an expensive torch it out of the question, when dropped it will be carried away by the stream.
Then compared to the peacefull very little backyard of 32m2 we had in Amsterdam with some robins, pigeons and our cat to rule it all, the 40.000m2 we got now holds some interesting nature. Foxes, deer and wild boar use the place where our mill stream connects to the river as a drinking place. I ve seen snakes about 1.5 meter long and in the river live rodents, the size of a beaver, with narrow tails (bever rat is the Dutch word, is it coypu/nutria?) who are not afraid of people at all.
One of the places where snakes really like to spend their time in winter is in the hole where the water meter and main water supply is
We live near a vibrant town, but the road leading to our house has no public lighting and the two houses closest to us are without people living there, making the closest neighbour about 500 meter away.
This is fine, but without a moon it can get pretty dark.
So reading about flashlights and taking the above into consideration.
I wanted a very long flashlight, so I will be able to poke and to give me the feeling of securety. So I ordered a flashlight that is about the size of a baseballbat. It was cheap but even the expensive brands (I remembered the old Maglites that the US police used, oh man i was looking for something like that) do not offer what I wanted.
As a complete newby on the subject I ordered another torch from the same seller with idiotic (i know now) specs, and was very happy it came with a 18650 cell and a charger (and again Captain Hindside here).
I posted my orders in reply to the blog the Dutch guy had written and he was very clear, waste of money i should haveā¦.orā¦ā¦
Hmm, I was reading a lot about it and found the 18650 cells filling some other needs I have. (powerbanks for cell phones)
Also I saw a lot of very nice looking flashlights in the real budgetrange and could not believe all are going to be crappy.
The Dutch guy who wrote the blogs gets Olight flashlights from Gearbest and heavily promotes them. My experience with Gearbest is that as long as you see them as working best in the lowest gear it can be acceptable but do not expect anything more or get very annoyed by the slowness.
Also I read and read and was stunned by the acceptance of the exaggerated specs. That is not right.
So being a great fan of Aliexpres i had some converations with my son of 11 about the subject.
We are planning on starting a youtubechannel centered about the theme play (playing computer games for example)
Playing in the dark night with flashlights seems like something we can also do there.
And away we went.
I ordered a whole bunch of flashlights that we just liked a lot by the looks of them.
Before ordering some of them I contacted the seller to pin him/her on specific specs (like, can it illuminate at 100 meter?) to pin them.
Of course gettng a bit wiser from reading I ordered a Nitecore D4 and Xtar charger and real decent Panasonic protected cells to lay a solid foundation.
I added a genuine Convoy C8 to the mix as a reference.
Sorry guys, spending 30+ on a flashlight does not sound likely for me right now.
Compared to cars, yes i know a Rolls will offer me a better experience then our Citroen C4 will, it is just not worth it for me. I can enjoy a Grimbergen dark beer a lot, and knowing the taste of a Westvleteren 12 (the Holy Grail of beers according to some) both have their moments for me. Still, if I am in Belgian at a store that sells special beers, nowadays I much more prefer to score some local beers instead of the Westvleteren.
Also, I really like the idea of a torch being a collection of part rather then 1 product.
So from my point of view I can not lose now.
1 I will have a lot of fun reviewing all the torches that are coming our way (win)
2 Torches that are bad wont cost me money thanks to the dispute syste of Aliexpres (no lose, and with some 3xAAA battery holders the not that good lights transform into nice presents for the friends of my son, win)
3 Torches with nice housing present a nice possibility to replace the LED, driver to create a really nice light and educational options (learning to solder for me and my son)
It is stange how this flashlight thing creeps up, I am talking to Simon of Convoy to make me a very nice C8.
And today after Gearbest was so slow on sending keeppower cells i cancelled that order and offered them to send me a Sunwayman instead. (looks and specs seens ideal for my wife)
So well, congrats if you made it this far, let me finish with one more note, I laughed really hard and used some jokes from the daily joke topic.
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