20-30 meters? That’s easy… Some of the suggestions here will top a kilometer. Almost anything these days can do 30 meters.
For cockpit lighting, you might want to get a different light. For example, take a look at the Zebralight SC52Fw. Or the L3 Illuminations L10-219. Or the 18650 version, SC62w (no ’F’rosted variant available yet). They’ll get you a nice amount of output with a floody beam and rather long runtimes.
Yes, So I am not asking a lot, just trying to find something with little spill. Ideally with a narrower head than a lot I have seen suggested so far,
No, that is precisely what I don’t want is a separate light.
I have had multiple lamps for years. dug 6 various small lamps out of my flight bag a few weeks ago , plus two different low power headlamps in the locker.
Fed up with multiple lamps, diffusers etc etc. Want just eh one lamp, small , 18650 power ideally, only to be comaptibel with my bike lights really…so AA will do, but I prefer 18650 as I have a large stock of them.
Ideally was looking for a good zoom, but since there are just none available that I have found that are suitable, I thought to look for ideas to use the A2Aviator way of doing things. A deep throw lens with little spill for out the cockpit window, with an LED or two, bare, to give a really wide flood.
Needs to be of a size that I can clip in a C clip to my flight headset.
I am converting a Suprabeam Q2 at the moment with different LED and firmware, so i get the low moonlight mode coming on first, no strobes or SOS nonsense.
A lot of the suggestions so far, on looking at articles and beam shots, still have a spill / halo ring around the outside, which I know from experience reflects off the glass more than a narrow beam.
Best beam so far is either the Q2 or the myled.com SingFire 132 zoom. A nice bright central square image of the LED. From what I have read, I may get a better result if I de dome those LED’s to get a tighter spot.
Lots of ideas to achieve what I want, all appreciated
This is the ideal shape from Sirius9
A zoom, tried that….nothing with a wide enough zoom, until you take the lens off and expose the bare LED. Bought Maglites and LED Lensers, and none to my liking, all have poor firmware or not wide enough flood
Hence the idea of a fixed narrow pencil beam like the picture above, and then make an external slightly wider ‘holder’ for two or three bare LED’s run at low level, to give moonlight almost non point source light.
I did try and find something a few years ago and eventually got dis heartened. Living on a small island I have not options to go out to a store and try different one sour. forums like this is the only option.
If you do find a collimator head iirc they were originally like $45-50 so dont be ripped off by someone trying to sell it for more than that
What is the diameter of the one you have?
I wonder about making a fitting to go on my own home build body tube.
The wide mode on zoomies generally goes from 45 degrees (relatively narrow zoom) to 90 degrees (wide zoom), except on some exceptionally bad lights which only get like 20 or 30 degrees.
I suggest trying a SK-68 since they’re only $4 or so and have a narrow pencil beam with no flood area at all (just a dim ring which you can eliminate by blackening the silver areas inside the light). At worst, it’s a cheap experiment. The flood is only about 45 degrees though.
For the wide beam you could use almost anything if you put some diffuser film on the lens. Or, since it sounds like you want to wear it on your head, you could just get a floody headlamp. This wouldn’t prevent you from also storing the throwy light in a clip in your headset. A ZL H52Fw or H502w (floody / pure-flood 1xAA headlamps) would provide a very very wide beam with good low modes and the longest runtime on the market. Can even be clipped onto an existing headset if you don’t want more straps on your head.
That A2Aviator looks like ancient tech with mediocre throw performance due to using a small reflector. The Suprabeam Q2 looks newer but fairly huge for its battery size, and looks like it uses a sliding reflector so it’ll get spill even in the throw mode.
The aspherics people suggested should have no spill at all. Just the hotspot.
You could try a UniqueFire T20 for a 1x18650 zoom with decent throw, but its flood isn’t very wide and it uses a screw-to-zoom mechanism instead of push/pull. The UltraFire 838 is similar but has much wider zoom (~90 degrees), push/pull sliding, less throw (bigger spot), and lower build quality. I’ve heard good things about a ZeusRay zoomie but haven’t tried one or paid much attention to the reviews because I don’t normally want a zoomie. I use entirely separate lights for flood and throw because they generally require very different body types.
+1. Recoil means no spill and some of them have another bare LED for wide illumination.
Camera lenses are a different thing, much higher precision. One the size of my Fresnel would be heavy and expensive. Big glass lenses look great on flashlights, but there is little other advantage to them. The reason cameras use single zone lenses is that the diffraction limit is set by the zone or segment size. LEDs are much bigger than the diffraction limits of even Fresnel lenses. If I put a camera lens on my flashlight, it would tear the paper and fall off. One of the scratch built contest lights was similar in concept but better executed.
Anyway, to get good efficiency in a flashlight you need short focal length relative to diameter which is small f number in camera terms. Throw is proportional to focal length the diameter of the lens in the large f limit, and to the focal length in the small f limit. (Oops!)
Could you apply some AR film to portions of the window?
Thanks for the overwhelming response gents ! Information overload! 
Dereeight looks great but with the lens attachment may be a bit big.
The good thing with it is that big bezel. Could add a couple of bare LED’s and driver into /on that somehow to also give the wide low moonlight flood.
Plus when visiting their site from outside USA, a big banner appears… Don’t ship outside USA…find a local
Dealer. As soon as we see that, it means expensive. Can usually double the price instantly.
That little Recoil UF 009 looks great, Would have to rip out the driver and add custom driver to loose the strobe modes and give moonlight as first on option.
The whole idea of this current quest /obsession with finding this pencil beam to flood is so I can get away from having two lamps. That is my current procedure. wide flood headlamp, plus shirt pocket narrow beam unbranded Maglite copy. Oh and another bright one used in ‘candle mode’ when unloading aircraft and want wide area ‘working light’.
As earlier stated I don’t need a ‘thrower’ as such. Distance needed is very close but I want the thin beam of a thrower for reasons stated earlier.
The engineering department might not like that!
That little SK 68 is interesting thanks
Regarding camera lenses, was not considering a complete lens, rather thinking of stripping them apart to see if any of the elements could be put to use
They are destined for the scrap anyway
I have an SK-68 which I’ve grown to like even though it has issues with the switch. There’s also the larger SK-98.
The standard in budget aspheric lights is still the Uniquefire UF-T20 (it zooms as well), with the led replaced by a dedomed XP-G2, and a driver at 3A. Start with that and then see if you need anything more.
You might want to consider Sunwayman C21C. Swap the red light to white led of your choice (I would suggest a Nichia 219B high CRI). Swap the top front XM-L2 led to XP-G2 (or XP-E2 for even tighter beam, I assume it's still save as long as it's on Noctigon/SinkPad) and swap the reflector to Carclo 20mm plain tight spot TIR. Tonight before I wrote this, I had try to fit Carclo 10138 frosted medium spot optic, that I had lying around, in my Sunwayman C20C. I leave the stock insulation gasket on the led, it help in focusing. It is a straight swap. Reflector height is the same as Carclo's optic height which is 10mm.
Hope this help :)
I like the C21C, that may work well.
Edit, image added to remind myself what it looks like.
This si the sort of thing I would like. maybe it is perfect with the swapped optics.
For now I have a Suprabeam Q2 and the two SingFire lights to modify. This separate pencil beam and separate flood LED’s is the backup plan.
Just turned and threaded a new host today to use an 18650 on the Suprabeam Q2, That has an amazing zoom, just need to see what driver I an going to get from Richard at Mountain Electronics for it.
yes he gonne like it!
(for djozz) weet u soms hoe 2 drivers (met 7135-380 )aan mekaar te knopen ?
You need two lights. First a aspheric lens light with the lens adjusted to give the spot beam wanted and another set up like the 120 degree flood beam assembly on the Fenix TK76 or TK51. Unfortunately due to the nature of LEDs and parabolic reflectors you are not going to get a combo with no spill. The reflector would need to have a continuous curve and the LED size would need to be a small spot with no appreciable surface area.
The widest flood beam I know of in a small light like you want is the FourSevens Quark RGB which seems to be out of production. Very shallow reflector and it has red, green, blue and white outputs. The red and white should be good for cockpit use at night but the light seems to be discontinued so you might need to look for one used. Below is the CPF review link for it.
4Sevens Quark RGB Review: RUNTIMES, BEAMSHOTS and more! | Candle Power Flashlight Forum!
Another choice for an all flood beam is the FourSevens Atom AL.
Would it be possible to have the plane’s owners mount a small spotlight or two on the exterior of the aircraft, with pilot control of them, that are properly aimed for checking wing icing? That would seem to me to be the optimal solution for lighting the leading edges you speak of.
It’s already been mentioned a few times, but the Uniquefire UF-T20 is the exact light that you are asking for. It is a zoomie that can do your “pencil beam” and wide flood too. It’s also a 1x18650 with the handle style that you specified.
Replacing the LED with a xpg2 seems to be the standard upgrade, which doesn’t look too difficult.
No I don’t, that is what I have already and what I am trying to solve, get away from. Actually been carrying about 6 in the bottom of my flight bag.
A zoom is one answer, and the other is a multi LED lamp like the A2 Aviator.
Am playing with zoom mods at the moment, but if that is not a success then the multi LED lamp is the way to try next.
That is what this thread was about, finding a thin narrow spill free beam single LED lamp, not necessary to have 1km throw , that I can mod, by adding a second wide area flood too probably by near naked LED’s in moonlight strength for cockpit area flood.
Am going to order one of the much mentioned UltraFire lamps should the SupraBeam Q2 zoom mod not be to my liking