Hi, I’m Aleksandar, From Montenegro - small Europe mediteranian country. I’ve been reading BLF for about5 year and learning a lot from you guys and I have registered today.
I collect flashlight for about 30 years from time when I was in primary school. I have started with incadescent Varta palm flashlight powered by 3R12 4.5 volts battery which was manufacturised in my country - Yugoslavia. I have many incadescent flashlights, some of them are modificated.
My collection of led flashlights consist of:
Zanflare F1
Zanflare F2
Sofirn SP31 V2.0
Sofirn C8G SST40
Sofirn SP33 V3
Sofirn SP33 S waiting to receive
Convoy T2 LH351D 4000K
Convoy S2+ SST40 5000K
Convoy M21A SFT40
Convoy L21B SFT40 waiting to receive
Seeknite S11
Clone of Nitecore tini
I have many chinese ‘no name’ led flashlights but when I first read this forum before 5 years I start to buy ‘better quality’ flashlights.
My first ‘BLF adviced’ flashlight was Zanflare F2 and I used it mostly.
Hello! Nice collection.
Hi there. Thanks for joining!
Hi from Croatia 
Croatia is a country with a huge tradition of manufacturing batteries and flashlights. “Croatia batteries” from Zagreb had almost a hundred years of tradition and millions of manufactured lamps, which were also sold under the VARTA brand name. All we who grew up in yugoslavia remember all that very well.
Greetings, acobp, and welcome! Montenegro is very picturesque and I hope to visit someday.
It's nice of you to join us, acobp!
Welcome to BLF acobp! Curious to know how you’ve modified your incandescent flashlights.
My first encounter with flashlights and attempts at modification date back to the time I went to primary school in the mid-1980s. In my country Yugoslavia, the most commonly used pocket square lamps were powered by a 4.5 v 3R12 battery, then small 2 x AA with a parallel arrangement of batteries and zooming 2 x D or 3 x D lamps produced in my country for Varta GMBH. The most common modification was to replace the round bulb with one that has a lens and gives a more direct beam and range. Usually, the lamps contained 3.5 volt 0.2 amp bulbs, which in my estimation did not give more than 10-15 lumens with new batteries, so the next step was to install 0.5 amp bulbs, which increased the power considerably.
The problem is that in the eighties alkaline batteries were quite rare and expensive in my country and almost everywhere you could only buy zinc carbon batteries from domestic 3 manufacturers or sometimes imported ones. These batteries were cheap and not leak-proof, so only with size D batteries could a reasonable operating time of 0.5 amps be achieved.
For me, a great discovery was the emergence of nickel cadmium batteries, which began to be made in our country but were quite expensive and unavailable.
Then I stumbled upon a block of batteries used for Motorola Walkie Talkie police and military devices that consisted of 8 cells the size of 5/4 aa or 7/5 aa as far as I remember and which had a capacity of about 1400 mAh for this larger dimension. I combined these cells with soldering and used 3 pieces as a replacement for 3r12 and even in some lamps I managed to push 3 x 2 in parallel, which drastically extended the operating time compared to the original and without problems drove Krypton pr12s bulbs to 0.7 ampere. I changed the D-size battery cell with 3 pcs 5/4 AA nicd connected in parallel. I did the charging in a primitive way with AC to DC adapters with fixed voltage steps that could then be found in the markets and usually gave about 300 to 500 mA. The charging voltage reached approximately 1.6 volts per cell and there was heating, but these cells withstood it.
Then I got nicd cells from military radio station that were as long as 1.5 D batteries and built in my big search lamp that was powered by 6 cells such 4 nicd cells and instead of 7.2 v 0.5 and put a halogen bulb of 0.85 amps which gave a good power and better color of light with much greater autonomy and of course I made a connector for the external charging adapter and was proud of my modification. This lamp had a reflector diameter of over 10 cm and gave a range of over 200 meters with strong peripheral light. I have used such lamps for a long time and I donated a lot of them, but I will try to take a few pictures of them, at least the favorites that I have saved. With the advent of LEDs and lithium batteries, I tried to modify some of the old lamps and perhaps the most successful modification was the installation of two 18650s connected in parallel instead of 3r12 and the installation inside a 4056 chip micro usb charger and a converter to charge a phone with usb output. there is space left in the lamp to insert a short micro usb cable small box of matches. as a light bulb I used an LED diode conversion with E12 sockets. The operating time was about 60 hours and the intensity was about 50 lumens in my estimation which was usable with a longer stay in nature. The lamp looked retro and true to the original on the outside except for the micro usb charging hole and an additional switch.
These are, in short, a couple of some essential modifications that I have made and that I have remembered so far.
I apologize in advance if my English is not good and grammatically correct.
Hi acobp, nice collection. I am from 1990. We are the last generation that modded incan lights and lived the LED revolution. Not like spoiled centennials who were born with 500+ lumen lights.
There is no better way to present your collection with some pictures of it!
A few old 3R12 powered flashlights from my collection:
