I wanted to share this story with you guys because it is just too funny not to tell. Not only was it hilarious to watch, but I think I managed to sway my girlfriend’s opinion on my flashlight addiction hobby as well. (apologies on the pictures, they are all cell phone pics so I tried my best)
We went on a beach vacation last week to Panama City Beach, FL (aka the Redneck Riviera) and it was a ton of fun. We had a beautiful condo, and one hell of a view.
So naturally, I had to bring all of my lights to “test them out.” 8)
(L to R) Convoy S3 (modded), Solarforce L2 (XML U2), XinTD C8 v5, HD2010 (heavily modded by Tom E), Supernight 12T6
I had never really been able to use them in such a wide open space before, so I had to see what they all looked like at a distance. For the first few nights I just used them primarily on the beach while walking around looking for crabs and what not. The GF especially liked the S3 because it put out “SO much more light then everyone else’s” (the beach was filled with people looking for crabs). The next night we walked along the pier to see all the guys catching fish. I brought along my HD2010 and played with it a bit along the way. Given the pier is one of the longest one’s I’ve walked along (1/3 mile), I can imagine the water depth at the end is probably 30-40ft.
The pier is packed with people night fishing. I got to the end, looked down, turned the HD2010 on high, and lit up the sea-floor brighter than a second Chernobyl! Instantly people started asking “Hey what kind of light is that, Where did you get that, How bright is that thing” (the last one was particularly amusing. I told the guy “Idk, it’s bright enough to see the sea-bottom!”)
So we got back to the room right as a storm was about to come through, had a few glasses of wine and waited for this huge squall line T-storm to hit. You could see lightning hitting the ocean and the beach off in the distance, yet people were still walking along the beach. Few glasses of pinot later and I decided it would be a good idea to “Warn” people that an impending storm was about to ruin their stroll along the beach (as if booming thunder and lightning weren’t warning enough :bigsmile: ) So along with verbal sound effects that mimicked an alien ship beaming up a human, I proceeded to light up people along the beach with the HD2010 (Specs: Fresh KK 26650’s, UCL/p lens, XM-L2 U2 1A de-domed on Noctigon, Nanjg 2.8A, 4 7135’s at 4.2A. 1,125 at 30 secs, ~200kcd). Given than my condo was on the 10th floor, of a building that sits on top of a 4 level parking garage, and the people were between 300 and 700ft from the base of the building, there was a perfect circle of high intensity light beaming down on these people from a pretty good distance. I would only do it for a split second, because as soon as you did, people would turn and look (I didn’t want them knowing which condo I was in so I kept it to super short bursts).
Long story short, turns out that someone else down the road (maybe 3 or 4 buildings down) had a flashlight and they were aiming it on one of the many little surf-shacks (rental shacks on the beach). So naturally, I wanted to lend a hand with my laser beam of a light. (they had a little zoomie or something like that. Had a tight beam, but not many lumens to speak of)
As soon as I light them up, 4 teenagers come running out in all different directions, shoving stuff in their backpacks and acting really sketchy (like they had just been caught by the cops smoking pot using tobacco smoking accessories) I almost died laughing! But it gets better…
So now the GF is laughing historically and wants to see if there are any more kids that are up to no good in these little huts. The sky opens up and just starts to dump rain like Noah’s Arch as she is scanning the half dozen shacks along the beach with the HD2010. She gets to the one directly in front of our condo, and spots some more teenagers inside a shack…
At first all you could see in the doorway of the shack were 2 pairs of “unclothed” legs laying horizontally in the sand :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: So this entire hut is lit up like Christmas, and the guy very quickly leans back a bit and tries to spot whoever it is that is ruining is Friday night. I’m trying to get the GF to turn the light off so they don’t see who it is that is lighting them up, yet she is in shock from what we’re seeing that she hesitates for a second, and then finally hits the button. A good 10 seconds go by with us looking at each other asking “Did we REALLY just see that?!?” So now there is a cellphone lit up inside the hut moving at a mile a minute (frantically trying to get dressed I would imagine), and then out pops the guy running like hell through a TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR over the sand (he’s not really covering much ground but his legs were moving faster than Forest Gump’s). Then out pops the girl a few seconds later, trying to run as fast as she can to avoid being completely drenched by this MONSOON of water that is coming down. So we lit them up again J)
HAHA the best part is that in every other situation, the people stopped walking… turned around… and looked at where the light was coming from. But these poor kids were probably so scared it was the cops and couldn’t stop because if they did, they would surely get even wetter, that they just kept on running! They tried so hard to look while at a full sprint across an entire beach and some hilly sand dunes that they almost face planted just trying to get to their car and get the hell out of there! 
The girlfriend now wants a flashlight like mine, which is a win for me, but not for my wallet :bigsmile:
its always more fun with powerful flashlights.
. You need to send that HD2010 back to me for an upgrade - BLF17DD will do a bit better now 
, more distance, more shacks in range. Actually a Yezl Y3 will toast a HD2010 in the same form factor.