FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

Been a long time since last log in, Glad to see this project still in the works.

Was hoping to have these this year for work, but its all good. Hopefully by next June have these to play with :smiley:

So, I want 1 light in total. Totally forgot that I had already commented.

Thanks!

Ever since post #1 got switched over to a team account there are updates there. So maybe just check post #1 every week or so to see the latest news.

Thanks for your answer Firelight2 :wink:

Farnell is good too. But good old RadioSpares is a mainstay. Maybe contact them and see if they have any plans to get more options in.

An aside, Sir Rowland Hill invented the modern postage system in 1837.

So we have some history in how to do it.

Plus the steam engine, the jet engine, the RR Merlin, RADAR, and the railway (and television).

Edit: and of course atom bombs, rockets that work and hypersonic transport. and the key technology for the Galileo system that will fall apart without us.

The USA of course came up with the Pony Express, but doesn’t seem to have progressed much since.

Night mail (Royal Mail still has a universal service obligation i.e. I can post something here on the south coast at say 5PM and be certain it will arrive in Orkney or the Outer Hebrides the following day, for the same price as sending it a mile down the road.

I don’t even need to put a stamp on, it will get delivered though the recipient will have to pay, which is a bit cheeky.

It’s more done with planes today (one of my staff used to pilot the night mail plane to Cologne once a week, to keep up his four-engine commercial rating on the BA 146). I tagged along once, which was fun (and co-piloted for a bit, whilst he had a snooze, but don’t tell anyone).

And trains (though it’s all a bit messed up at the moment since a timetable change was introduced a few weeks ago, big-bang style, which isn’t quite working yet, wouldn’t have happened in Switzerland or Japan)

An amusing observation about the reliability of oil lamps, about nine minutes in.

All in fun,whilst we await developments and evaluations of the B models.

It’s been a long haul waiting for this light and I’d bet we’ve got a bit more waiting to do, but these latest discussions and seeing the latest sample is getting me excited all over again.

I’ve got little experience with all of the emitters mentioned in this thread but my preference is for warm to neutral tint and flood over throw but I like the idea of offering a couple versions (which might make someone at Lumintop’s head explode with the added complexity) to hopefully satisfy more people’s needs.

That said, this should prove to be a light that makes the flashlight community sit up and take notice. Powerful, small, slick and affordable in one package. We oughta count our blessings whatever they decide.

I was in a dark area. No stray light pollution from any nearby houses, and the nearest city or town about 100km away.

See the following light pollution map for your nearest dark-sky area:

http://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html

It’s really not dark until you’re in the “blue” or darker areas. That means most of the eastern US is not dark.

That said, I didn’t let my eyes fully dark-adapt, so I probably would have made out the road near me if I did fully dark-adapt. That would have taken 20-30 minutes. Still, there’s no way I’d want to be stuck in a dark-sky area without a light.

I am fortunate to have easy access to truly dark sky, from my northern base. Kielder and Galloway. The fewer lumens the better, with spread, not throw.

It’s regulated, this is important, street lamps and other things, as well as some RF stuff that can mess up the radio telescopes.

It is really quite an experience to see truly dark sky, that’s if your frazzled city eyes can cope.

And it would be very rude indeed to shine around an aggressive torch that meets some BLF ideas about “max power”.

I voted and used my BLF username…

Come on XP-L HI!!!

I’ve officially lost interest in this discussion since apparently you mind is made up on who’s the blame for the high shipping cost you have to endure when buying directly from an US company like Digikey.

One useful piece of information I can contribute is, did you know Digikey has an EU presence just for folks like yourself?

Go to www.digikey.co.uk and enjoy free shipping for orders over £33.

Enjoy the free shipping, live long and prosper.

Put me down for just 1 right now, looks like you already did. Thanks!

Yes, that looks like well into the blue area of the dark sky map I linked. Similar to where I was a couple of nights ago. There are some parks I’ve been to that are a shade or two darker than the blue areas, but they’re a couple of hundred kilometers away so I rarely get there. I’d like to go to even darker areas, but those are a long way from civilization, mostly in mid-northern parts of Canada where you can’t even get to by road. I think there are some equally good areas like that in the deserts of the US, and certainly much easier to get to.

It’s a shame that most people in industrial parts of the world will never get to see the stars under a truly dark sky.

That’s a great map, thanks! Bookmarked.

My wife’s family has a cabin that’s outside the blue in the light gray, and over 9,000 ft elevation. The sky is amazing at night.

Altitude has a huge benefit, if you want to see the stars. Gets rid of most of that humid air that makes the stars look dimmer.

I live in a dark green area on that map; it used to be blue I believe but not in recent years. So for walking around home, some of the light is pollution. My astro shots suffer a color cast. But I’ve been to darker places; the part of the yellowstone area I visited was pretty good. I could still see by starlight, though it did take some adjustment time.

Yes, a real shame. :frowning:

Besides the remote high country of Colorado & Wyoming I think the darkest area I have experienced is in the Gulf of Mexico.

It is hard to beat a night spent drifting a couple of hundred miles offshore in a sport fishing boat on a clear cool crisp low humidity fall night with no moon.

Turn off all the boat lights, darken all the helm gauges. Darken all the electronic screens…… leaving only the proximity alarms active on the two radars…….

That……. is nothing short of magic!!

Oh, the Milky Way on a clear night. Fabulous. And humbling.

No torch necessary.

You guys and your night sky talk!

I am always in the big city. I guess I don’t know what I’m missing. I am happily ignorant, though! :stuck_out_tongue:

I remember about 10 or 15 years ago, there was a power outage that knocked out most of north-east US and southern Canada. I think it lasted for at least several hours, and up to a couple of weeks in some places.

Did people in New York City look up at the sky, and wonder, “WTF is that?” Or, did they just not bother looking up, because there’s never any point in doing so?

(Or maybe it was cloudy or the moon was out?)

Left the city to stay near Galloway for a few nights some years ago, never knew there were so many visible stars on a clear night. Beautiful.