Good Old Times ?

LOL yea, I had my share of those conversations. Even when the green pointers first came out but you could “hack” them beyond 5mw so they had a nice visible beam at night, there’d always be some kid running up to me “OMG I NEED THAT!!”. Not “I want…” “NEED!!!”. I stopped when ppl shining lasers at planes and such started making the news. Just not worth it. (I never, ever, did anything like that)

Came here to get the BLF GT/GiggleMonster. I’m even scared to use that.

AZJ
Ditto for me. I never posted there but some amazing things to learn. The knuckleheads around here used to flash planes and there were reports of dummies flashing choppers from Fort Bragg. Very unhealthy

I’d kick a puppy for an M43.

I bought a manker mk35 II (sbt 90.2) and then a weltool W4 and they were basically like socially-acceptable mega-lasers, so I set my Sanwus and so on upon a shelf, and I never looked back.

Maybe

Hello good morning sir, wat is this you are linking

Why thank you, beautiful stranger.

Relatively new flashaholic here. Thanks for the awesome thread! This is a tread to read through.

What was Hank doing 10 years ago? Did he have another brand before Noctigon/Emisar?

That SkyRay 7 LED light sure looks an awful lot like Q8. Did SkyRay become Thorfire and then Sofirn?

I think everyone had a version of Q8, some called it something else.

12~13 years ago all my info on flashlights came from a Brazilian forum (maybe some from another American forum), and one thing I remember is that a LOT of people loved the p60 standard, and scoffed at proprietary formats. How things change…

PS: I do miss Solarforce and regret not getting more products from them, and while more hosts would be nice, getting a clip for my L2T is on top of my bucket list.

Had to goggle it for the dates, but I got my first “real” flashlights, a pair of Quark 2AA-Xes (at least I think that’s what they were called) back in 2013-2014 or so.

But I did like the River Rock (Target house brand) lights, the 1×AA and 2×C beasties.

I bought my first LED flashlight in November 2007.

Even though I did research, the flashlight wasn't all that great.

It was a Rayovac 2AA 80 lumen flashlight.

At the time, I thought it was pretty bright.

...

EDIT:

The worst part was the clip.

Any time you removed the clip or put it back on, it scratched up the anodization on the flashlight.

Granted, I don't think the clip was made to be removable.

The Q8 was a BLF initiative after so many people had Sky Ray Kings that had terrible heatsink problems, structurally they were just fairly bad designs and everyone in China was copying that bad design. So we designed our own version that really showed what a sodacan light can be, and were lucky to convince Thorfire to make it, that was the BLF/Thorfire Q8. Then later the OEM manufacturer that made Thorfire flashlights started their own brand Sofirn and then Sofirn made (they asked our permission, that was thoughtful) their own versions of the Q8, and spin-offs like the Sofirn SP36.

Closer to the subject of this thread: I still have my Romisen RC-G2 which I still find a great form factor that was not repeated since, in the meantime it has a BLF-A6 derived direct driver and a dedomed Luminus SST-20 4000K 95CRI. Beautiful beam from the light OP reflector of the RC-G2.

My first lithium-ion powered flashlight was purchased in September 2010.

I knew about BLF at the time, which is where I got the idea for the flashlight, but I didn't create an account until a month later.

This is the flashlight...

The famous (at the time) LumaPower MRV SE from FocalPrice.

It was a great flashlight in 2010.

My family has one and still uses it today.

I have one as well, but I quit using it years ago.

I haven’t been into lights very seriously until the last few years but I do remember having some Inova LED flashlights that I found at Walmart when I was younger. They were pretty nice but sadly I don’t have them any longer. I had some Surefires like a 6P LED, G2 LED, some others too, and remember getting really cheap P60 modules from dealextreme. I guess I missed the hype for the XML T6 that still seems to be the best emitter ever made since it’s still being advertised with so many of those cheap lights.

Arc 1-AAA and Luxeon Legend 3AA was my start in the height of dot-com bubble aka 2000. The other NOT-TO-BE-NAMED forum was flying high.

I still have Romisen RC-G2 although its driver is injured and only puts out feeble light.

CPF used to be “the place to be” for LED flashlights. There were so many great people actively posting there. I learned a lot. I was fortunate to jump on the NovaTac 120P bandwagon fairly early on, and also nabbed a Liteflux LFT2xt as they were being closed out. Those were fun days. But, we do have great people here. Education wise, I’ve learned far much more from the community here on BLF. And the tech improvements? It’s amazing how far we’ve come to this point. Now tint ramping and multi-channel lights are in play. We’ve got seriously capable makers like Emisar/Noctigon & Fireflies putting out lights we could have only dreamed about just 8 years ago.

I do wonder if these days will be reminisced about some years in the future, when things change again. When high economic stress is in play and raw materials are much more expensive, I expect modding will be enjoying a big boost—repurposing older lights with newer emitters, being far more economical than buying brand new lights.

I have definitely seen the term “foybevel” a lot reading old threads.

As for the skyray kings, I modded a Supfire M6 with xhp50.2 to make probably 10k lumens.

The Q8 is what got me really interested in modern flashlights and what they could do. Also fueled by the childhood memories of this beast of a flashlight that my grandma had with a fluorescent tube down one side. Flickered and took a second to come on.