Thinking of doing a Convoy S11 Quad as my first build...

Thanks! I’ll try to remember to take pictures.

I am a little confused about my order from Mountain Electronics though. After I clicked checkout and Paypal sent the payment, I was brought back to the site’s checkout button. I didn’t press it again, but it did not remove the items from my shopping cart. Fortunately, the order showed up in the “Order History” section. Strangely, it says the order was completed. …What happened to processing and then shipped? Is this normal for Mountain? It’s my first order from there.

Boy, that wasn’t a good start…

All my stuff arrived today for the build. Looking in the box, as I removed the MCPCB from its little bag, it slipped out of my hand and fell right into the crevice in the couch between the springs and the arm rest. It took me over a half-hour with the couch upside-down to fish the damn thing out. I even broke a spatula trying to wedge something thin enough down there to get it. But get it I did, fortunately. I hope I didn’t damage any of the domes on the LEDs. I will get some pictures taken of all the parts before I start the build.

Well, I took pictures while I did the build yesterday evening, but I forgot that BLF requires some link to an outside image website, and I don’t have any accounts like that (nor do I feel like making one). Oh well.

But I did learn a few things putting this light together.

1. Do NOT hold the pill with your bare hand by the threads while drilling a hole through it. The drill bit caught and the pill spun in my hand. The threads cut my thumb. It’s not a bad cut (only about a quarter inch slice, and it barely bled), but it sure was a dumb one.

2. Do not try to stretch out the spring with the positive wire attached to it AFTER it is soldered to the board, especially if you are bad at soldering.

3. Being liberal with thermal compound leads to a messy flashlight build.

Seriously though, it went together well enough, even though I am terrible at soldering. The 4000k LH351Ds give a nice tint, and the light puts out a minimum of a couple of lumens, up to what seems to be a maximum around 3000 lumens. It can maintain maximum brightness for several minutes as well (except for when my first soldering attempt came loose from heat after about thirty seconds).

The spacer was just a touch too short, leaving the flashlight prone to mode switches when shaken as the battery lost contact with the springs. Fortunately, the Convoy host came with its own spring to be attached to the board. I had Mountain Electronics put one on, so I simply screwed the extra on onto the tail spring. No more battery rattle!

The light is VERY floody. There is no hotspot nor is there any spill; the light is just a uniform disc of large diameter. It’s very pretty, though almost too much flood; I’m concerned it won’t have enough throw for outdoor use on moderate power. I ordered the carclo lens that was said to have the most throw. Either the others are absurdly floody or I was sent the wrong TIR lens.

Crescendo is an interesting firmware which would be much more intuitive and user-friendly with a reverse-clicky switch instead of a forward. As I learn it and the half/full press sequences to perform different tasks, I am still getting incorrect mode activations. I’m still fiddling to see if I like having the memory on or off.

Overall I am happy with the flashlight, though it does bother me that I could have bought an Emisar D4Sv2 with XP-L HI 5Ds and anduril for less money. But I will say that Mountain Electronics did a great job reflowing the LEDs to the board, and sells some great stuff.

Nice job and thanks for your report. I had a chuckle at your description of the few things you learned. :smiley: These flashlights can be pretty fiddly to put together, but you tend to learn the important stuff pretty quick.

The LH351D is a relatively large LED so tends to make the beam large. The TIRs also tend to make a larger beam with less spill, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the beam won’t be intense. The TIRs do a good job of making wide and intense beams, so I think it will work for you. However, you are right that combo of 4 LH351D in the small reflectors makes for a relatively less intense beam partly because each LED is only seeing a quarter of the total current so it’s more difficult to drive each LED hard enough for good throw.

I, too, like Crescendo. It’s definitely better with a reverse clicky. I’m curious, when you have memory on, does it go directly to the memorized mode when you turn it on or does it start in moonlight mode for a fraction of second before going to the memorized mode? I’m using a very early version of Crescendo which has that feature, but I don’t know if it was kept.

Thanks! If I ever build another light, I hope those things aren’t repeated… like the old rule of shutting off the circuit before changing a light switch. I know it’s the right thing to do, but I’ll electrocute myself a few times every time I do it.

Yes, the light will turn on at the floor for a second before switching to its memorized brightness. My FW3A does that too, yet my EDC18 does not; I guess that was an update to anduril. It’s not too intrusive though. The most annoying thing I find is that sometimes, even though memory is on, it starts to ramp when I first turn the light on. Sometimes from the floor, and other times from the memorized level. My guess is it’s something weird with the memory from how I turned it off with the forward switch. Like, to stop ramping requires a quick full click off and then a full click on. If I don’t turn the light back on right away, it seems to resume ramping the next time I turn it on. Accessing the shortcuts requires half-presses and then a final full click. Sometimes it memorizes the floor or ceiling shortcuts. If I do a quick off-on, it’ll ramp up, unless I accessed turbo directly. Then it switches to moonlight. Maybe I’m just an idiot…

I think it’s worth getting a reverse clicky switch. See here for one that will work:

Sorry to hear that your S11 didn’t go as well as you planned. I’ve never had a pill cut my fingers while drilling a center hole, but will keep that in mind in the future. There always seems to be some type of challenge when building your own flashlight, but that’s just part of modding. Regardless, congrats on your first mod!

What happened was I drilled a 3/8” hole first and decided I wanted it a little larger. When using a 1/4” bit, it caught on the edge of the already drilled hole, cocked a bit sideways and got wedged, and spun the pill in my hand. Whoopsie doodle!

I’m mostly happy with the build, and getting used to using the forward switch. I may eventually look into a reverse clicky, but whomever tightened the retaining ring on the host made it really tight… I couldn’t easily get it off. So I’ll live with it for now. I’m actually really coming to enjoy its floodiness. I tend to use it at a higher level than I might a different light, but that’s o.k.

I’m here to request pix

You don’t need accounts for this

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Hey, that worked! Thanks for the link!!

Beamshot

On the left is my FW3A with XP-L HI 5000K on its lowest.
On the right is my S11 Quad on its lowest (LH351D 4000K).

You can see that the S11 is brighter on low, but also look at how much larger its beam is. The lights are a little less than a foot from the wall.

Beamshot2

This one may be a little better for comparison, as if you look closely in the first picture, the FW3A is further from the wall.

Is the optic pretty much sitting on the LEDs? Wondering if there is either a gap, or the LED larger than optic? How does it look straight on (not turned on). Wondering how a D4s beam compare?

I took the light apart and the optic does fit nicely on the domes of the LEDs. To me, it doesn’t look like it could move any further down on top of them. They are domed, and even though the domes are inside the optic, perhaps they’re just naturally floody and that is exacerbated by the short TIRs.

I wondered that too, about the D4. They do use the same Carclo optic, right?

I was thinking about how floody this light I built was. It was a beautiful, creamy tinted light, but I have been unlikely to use this light when I was outside, because to get any useful throw, the power had to be cranked up. So I thought: what’s the easiest way to get more throw? Slice the domes!

I clearly did something wrong, because once I sliced the domes off (actually, popped the domes off is a better term of what happened) and reassembled the light, that wonderful tint was now completely gone, replaced by something astonishingly bad…

Compare the two pics below. The first is with an EDC18 using XP-L HI 5000K LEDs and the second is the dedomed LH351Ds (that used to be 4000K).

To be fair… it is less floody!

Nice quad! Much cleaner than mine!

Oh that’s a bummer, at least you can fix it easily with a reflow or new board w/emitters mounted.

When slicing LH351D I only take off about half the height of the dome or a bit more, for a couple reasons but mostly because it doesn’t drop the color temp as much - the added benefit is that there’s less risk of cutting too low and damaging the phosphor.

Make sure you have a thin, sharp blade to use. Either a fresh razor or scalpel, or a well-sharpened knife with a thin edge. Work slowly and don’t use a lot of force.

LH351C are a throwier option as well, they’re basically a smaller LH351D and almost certainly could be sliced the same.

I was using a new x-acto knife, but the domes just popped right off with minimal pressure of the blade. If I had done an online search before attempting to do it, I’d have found out exactly what would have happened if the domes were removed. Whoops…

I have already ordered the 5000K LH351Ds to replace these. They’ll probably be as floody as the 4000K, but hopefully the cooler temperature LEDs will be brighter.

I’ve also ordered an S11 from Convoy’s AX store, that has an SST-40 and biscotti. It will be coming with a bypassed, reverse clicky switch that I will probably transplant into my build.

Today the new LEDs came, as did the S11 with the SST-40. The S11 was a pleasant surprise; I didn’t realize it was shipping from California, so I thought I would be waiting for China shipping. That thought was aided by the fact that the USPS tracking number never worked… I was waiting for it to make it to the States before that kicked in.

I put my quad build into the “blunish gray” host, with its reverse-clicky, bypassed switch. Crescendo really is more intuitive with a reverse switch, though now I have to unlearn the forward-switch controls. With the 5000K Samsung LEDS, the light is just as floody as it was before with the 4000Ks, but it does seem to surpass 3000 lumens. It’s probably not up to 4000 lumens, but it is brighter than it was. And the 5000K have a pretty rosy hue to them still.

The SST-40 S11 doesn’t seem to lose much power without its bypassed switch. Biscotti works fine with the forward switch too. The only thing that concerns me is the battery check. As far as I knew, four flashes for the battery meant it was full. I’m getting five flashes… Doesn’t that mean the battery is overcharged?