[PART 1] Official BLF GT Group Buy thread. Group buy officially closed! Lights shipping.

Yep, those numbers sounds about right from my own testing as well. It generally takes about 20m to get the peak throw numbers and turbo will make a difference in meter readings.

I have had both of my GT’s in momentary mode the last few weeks, it is fun to just blast them.

:+1:

Mine is doing 850kcd in turbo with 4 cells NCR18650B panasonics (not high amps) but thoigt it only draws 2A per battery? Or am I wrong?

So max throw is only possible with 8 cells?

At what distance you have put the luxmeter?

10 meters

Part of it is the distance but yes, with low drain cells like that and the higher then expected Vf of the LED (we have planned on 1V lower when designing the driver) it will fall out of regulation much faster then planned.

For best results try some high drain cells and put in 8 cells if you can and see if the readings improve.

With only 4 laptop cells (about the same quality as the ones you are using), I noticed I could not hit full 2.5A to the LED in my light.

With GA cells it worked fine though and 30Q worked even better for regulated runtimes.

That’s the only way I’ll use it. Same thing with the D1S. That’s what throwers were made for.

Just got back inside from the first outside test and it’s a ridiculous beast. Good job GT team!

My GT in two parts arrived yesterday, too. The performance is impressive and matches what has been seen on a bunch of beamshots. In total darkness with average visibility conditions I didn’t have enough distance to exceed the usable throw without moving further. Easily illuminated targets within 1 kilometer. Nice,team, manufacturer and other parties involved!

The minimalist packaging might be due to some shipping rate limits at 1 and 1.5 kg, as the boxes had Finnish Post measured weights of 1.47 and 0.99 kg. I don’t know why the original declaration says 0.5 kg for both but I guess some involved party on the way might not have a scale at their disposal. :slight_smile:

I was kind of scared to see the two balls of brown cardboard or toilet paper that had been submerged in water. Miraculously the window was not broken, and it appears others had the same result. Good job, I guess. The actual light arrived undamaged even if a bit dirty. A couple of scratches were to be expected from any mail shipment, to be honest.

If someone has one out of two missing, I got a theory. Finnish Posti decided to deliver the tube with batteries into my unattended mailbox while the headpiece was to be picked up from a post office. Obviously they are required to only hand out a registered package against signature and ID, but this worked out this time. In case it wouldn’t fit, the mailman would have to take it back and it could take a couple of days to show up again, especially when the box including the label could very well be ruined and unscannable. Don’t panic, but ask for the tracking data and if available, use it to search locally. You would not want it to be sent back in a week or two.

What was funny is that the other tracking number didn’t show any movement via any tracking service between leaving the origin country and being available for pickup from the post office. The other package tracked fine all the way. Both arrived at the same time in the end.

Picked up my GT this afternoon from the post office!
The boxes were very clean and undamaged, they only wrote my name on the side of the box with a marker so it was more easy to find between all the other packages.

Will try to post images later, did not even open it yet :sunglasses:

Oh, I forgot. Neal’s bag and cap set arrived at the same time with the 2 halves and quite possibly had been sent at the same time. A very similar Malaysia Post code with it, too. Notice in mailbox to pick up at the post office with ID.

The included nipple modified 35E seem OK. I kind of panicked looking at the (notoriously inaccurate) resistance values shown by my Lii500 charger as they were on the high side. Only just realized I was comparing them to a set of 30Q batteries I had ready for initial testing. How silly of me. :smiley:

I just ran it with 8 cells, all the same Pannies, and hit 930.000.....

I don`t think I will be able to see the difference ;)

!!
Not the best quality photo but on the left my GT got it today with registered. On the right my dads GT that he got with DHL couple of weeks ago(beamshot about 3 meters away from wall) Reflectors are pretty different if checked by eye. Mine has got a smaller hotspot. When shining further away the difference is less noticable.

Package

Tube

Head

Almost spotless mirror finished, very small machning lines

The GT makes the L6 look like a baby

Crappy beamshot with cellphone

At first, i put in some 30Q’s and fired it up. To be honest i was a little disappointed, i thought is that everything?
Then i took it out in the field, and man, i got a huge grin on my face :smiley:

According google the trees are 400 m from this point, the pic is very poor, but it lit up the trees like it was nothing!

This thing is a beast!

My GT, on the right, has a bigger and less intense hotspot. The reflector of my son’s GT is better, more mirrorlike, as mine is more OP.

So I got a nice little delivery today as well which was a huge surprise as I wasn’t expecting anything till into March sometime instead of the 11 days total! :smiley:

Minor damage to the bottom of the package


well it made it threw the outside box to the GT’s box…. :frowning:




Everything looks perfect. Batteries are charging up so hopefully I can play a little before I have to go to bed. Thank you so much to everyone who was involved in anyway with this project. After a very crappy last couple of weeks (work, etc) this has brought a massive smile to my face! So glad I have a week of holidays after tomorrow!!

Fun experiment with the GT: try blocking the beam with your hand… you can’t get the hotspot to disappear!
It looks like the beam goes THROUGH your hand. :laughing:

Is the light on the right at a brighter level making the hot spot look larger on camera?

Can you try this picture at a much lower brightness level like moonlight?

Anything above moonlight my camera makes the hotspot appear bigger.

At 9 feet, I get a hotspot diameter of 8” or 20.5 cm roughly.

My corona is also much smaller.

Here’s a tip for removing the bezel. Loosen the upper head from the light engine section first, this takes pressure off the o-ring on the glass and makes the bezel much easier to turn due to less friction.

Why didn’t I think of that sooner. Duh. :wink:

I spent a lot of time doing that and other neat tricks for the first couple of days after I received mine. Another neat trick is to go out on a completely (as possible) dark night and ramp the power as low as possible (not talking about accessing moon just the bottom level of the ramp). Then try to see how far you can detect light. It’s absolutely insane how far this reflector will throw that small amount of light output. This is a very special flashlight and I am so happy that I joined the blf for these and so many other awesome opportunities to see just what is possible. To be able to get advanced and intuitive designed flashlights at a budget price is just icing on the cake imho.
TA I commend you and all the other collaborators on this project. All of you do a great job of proving that “budget” most certainly does not mean CHEAP!