I’m not saying you are wrong, but it was always my understanding that the typical air mail we use today is also “registered mail” by definition.
The “slow boat from China” often refers to air mail, too. The economy option can be really slow even when the carrier decides to use air mail from, say, Mainland China to a European country. There could be lots of delay before and after the flight part of the journey. Air transit could be comparably very cheap if you don’t need the next flight and could do with any suitable connection within the next two weeks.
The reasoning is similar to airline passenger tickets: sometimes you can book flights for a price that would hardly cover fuel. It’s just better business to have something extra on board instead of nothing more when you’re flying anyway and the aircraft is not even half full.
The same applies to non-aviation logistics. It’s going to be cheaper to transport goods on rubber wheels when you don’t need it delivered ASAP and it can just be covered in a pile of other non-critical parcels using an almost First In, Last Out principle.
If the item is being shipped from the sender to the buyer via eg DHL the entire journey, then DHL contact the buyer when the item reaches the UK to charge the buyer the amount of VAT due plus a processing fee as they then pay VAT to customs on your behalf .
If the item is being delivered within the UK by the Royal Mail (UK postal service) customs contact you & you have to pay the VT before the item is released to be delivered to you.
Either way, as far as I know anyway, you have to pay VAT before you receive an item as you are given the choice of not paying VAT & not receiving the item.
I do not believe that I will be receiving a retrospective bill after I have received this package.
One other thing I noticed about my package apart from the fact there is no mention of the package coming from Hong Kong on the labelling just a London address, is that there is no value what so ever on the labelling.
This reinforces my belief that the package was sent to somebody in the UK first then posted from there to me as a separate, internal to the UK, shipping transaction.
Went out tonight and did a few poor beamshots, was only on my phone. managed to hit a reflector on a building almost exactly 2 miles away! it has a small white light on it too - you can’t see the reflector in the photo sadly as the pics are from the beach.
Lovely night for it - I shone it from Henry VIII’s Sandsfoot Castle (the window opposite the door in the photo below to the last light building on the middle section of Portland Breakwater (Portland end) - Google Earth shows it as 1.99 Miles! Had a bit of a burn up with my BLF -TE and it was nearly as far, just way less powerful!
Funny you should say that Nev……… it is not in the least bit warm in real life. The one in my BLF-TE (comparison colour) is swapped - it’s an XM-L2 U4 1A as far as I remember.
I wonder if they have put different colours in the GT’s?
Mine was the same, Royal Mail 48. As you say, everything I’ve had from Gina before has had a customs sticker whereas this didn’t. There was a sticker underneath the RM on, but I don’t think it would have survived me taking the RM one off!
Noted about the retrospective charge mentioned by someone, although I think I’ll be ok.
That’s good to know, I don’t like warm or nichia tints ,to me they look dull & dim ,I’m not too keen on neutral either , but the GT may be different as it’s got some power behind it which would cancel the dim-dullness out lol.
No, there are still about 50 orders not shipped and the last batch that was shipped the tracking numbers were not sent out. Martin has a list that he has been sending to people but we are not sure how accurate it is. It was obviously done in a rush. You can find the link to it in the OP.
I don’t know about blowing the tint out of proportions, but it is certainly the warmest tint I have. I’ve been trying hard to get accustomed to it, I seem to like it better sometimes than others. Maybe my Gt got an emitter on the lower edge of the spectrum. On the plus side I am glad that others are enjoying it. Either way I can always get RMM at mountain to do an emitter swap if I choose to eventually.
Tint is largely dependent on what you are used to. It is a VERY relative thing as your eyes and brain will grow accustomed to whatever tint you expose it to.
If you look at some CW lights and then turn ont he GT or shine them side by side, then yes, the GT will look warm.
Use it all by itself without anything else biasing your eyes and brain and it looks much more neutral.
I was playing with some tints the other day and it is funny how one minute 4500k can look warm and the next it can look cool all because of what you are comparing it to.