Oh My! Where to start....
The logical place would be to extend a warm welcome to all the new faces here that have joined since my last post ( ~ 3months?).... but I'm not feeling very logical at the moment, so I'll simply say " sb56637, Don, Foy, Oxy, JacktheClipper, OldBobK, Johnnymac, Langcjl, old4570, e1320, brted, fishinfool, budgeteer, Flashpilot, and of course the universally loved Boaz (and all the rest of the old gang):
"Hey Guys, I'm back! How the heck have you been?! I've missed talking to y'all... and of course pestering you good folks with my weak attempts at modding :)"
Well now, with the formalities out of the way I suppose I should start with what's been going on. Since mid July till the first week of August I was on vacation back in my home state of Minnesota. Spent a lot of time outdoors and loved every minute of it. Since coming back home life's been a blur...and I never seemed to have time to sit down at the comp. A few days ago I realized I should make time, so here I am (truth be told, I was also kinda getting burned out a bit messing with flashlights).
Although I haven't been online posting, that doesn't mean I've not been modding... Here are a few items of interest that have been entertaining me as of late (sample teasers more or less...I think I could do a full post on each one.):
First up is my old faithful Fenix LD01. Nothing too fancy here, just an emitter swap to a NW xp-g.
My first and favorite little triple A got a whole new lease on life, imho... This is the one light that goes everywhere with me and now has a tint I can live with. Beam is nice and even with the stock reflector and output took a noticable increase if used with 10440's. Side note here: about 2 months ago I bought a ITP A3 because so many have loved this little light. Personally, there's no comparison. The LD01 is so much smoother to operate and doesn't seem as mode finicky, and the body is much easier to grasp. Really, what was ITP thinking with that design of the outer body...so slippery!
Next up is my old Tiablo A9. This light was a fantastic thrower back in the day, and actually still holds its own now. Absolutely nothing wrong with it as it sits in stock trim, but mine just sat there in the box unused for the most part...so I figured I try and spice it up. If anything could focus an XM-L the way it should be in a relatively compact package, this should be it. As with most of my mods, I started out by making a huge custom solid copper heatsink and boring the stock body to accept it.
And finished up the works by mounting the XM-L and driver :
As you can tell, the driver is a SB2.8a with a couple extra 7135's added. The results are phenomenal for an xm-l thrower in this small form factor:
Stock Reflector: 32,500 cd
With Aspheric: 77,200 cd
Yup...it throws like Nolan Ryan post minors....
Some of you folks may not have seen my old post where I build a 6x XM-L Maglite. It was awhile ago now, and another light that I build but never saw much use due to it's design limitations. Well, I think I got around the power issue and usability issue now buy the addition of a fantastic driver called the H6Flex. The whole works is now being powered by 4 26650 LifePO4's on a 3D host. The difference is outstanding. It used to be the light only had two modes : Pitch black and Rapture. Now I have a choice of 8 different modes from 35 lumens up to over 5,100lumens...and all current regulated. The UI is really outstanding on this driver and worthy of a write-up all by itself. Suffice to say that this is the one light now that can truly do it all from emergency hurricane light with a runtime over 2 weeks in the low modes to impromptu fire starter in high mode while pointed at combustibles...and it also makes a dandy blunt weapon to boot!
There's a bunch more I'd like to post up here, but I'm getting long winded now as it is so I'll finish with one more. My idea of the cut down mini-mag light. JohnnyMac does an excellent job with his, but I wanted to go in a slightly different direction. I decided to forgo the tailcap completely and make it a front loader. Much like my MiniMatch builds, the head is bored out and a custom solid copper pill was made to hold a triple xp-g and driver. Considering the driver is a PWM only controller and direct drive in high, I wanted the pill to be as beefy as possible. This was the first one I made and is my working prototype. The last ones I've done all had brass tailcaps, which imho looked better. The next ones the custom tailcaps will have a built in clip.
And here's a coulpe shots with all of it's friends. It's hard to tell from the photos, but it's just a smidge shorter than my fenix LD-01...and yes, the micro mag has a battery in it!.
As you can see, it's shorter than all but the ITP-A3, albeit a bit wider. The idea here was to see how much light I could possibly get out of such a small form factor. The answer? Just a smidge over 1050lumens OTF off of a IMR 14500. If anyone knows of anything as small and brighter, I'd like to hear about it.... The term pocket rocket has been abused to death and I won't apply that term here...besides, I'm partial to " Mouse Missle!" - Go ahead, say it out loud and try not to smile :)
Well, that's going to wrap it up for my first post back in months....Hope it wasn't too boring. I've got a bunch more stuff to post as well, but it can wait till a later date. (woot-lite update, huge driver test, xp-g @ >2.5amps, and a relatively new flashlight design, amongst others....)
So again, to the new guys here I say Welcome....and to all my old friends I say "Y'all ain't seen nothing yet.."
-Match
