So last night I met up with a fellow BLF’er who I’ve known for a while outside of BLF and I said that instead of meeting up during the day today we should meet up in the evening so 9pm I turn up at the hotel he was staying in to have a quick play with some bright torches in the grounds.
I knew that this hotel was in the sticks so wouldn’t suffer the light polution as much as where I live and it was the first time I got to play with my TK75 in the PROPER dark and WOW.
I do plan on going back there with a tripod and the camera to take photos for posting on here but last night I really didn’t have time I just wanted to have a quick play.
So I started small and worked by way up the lights.
Out came the Nitecore SENS CR, what a wonderful light in the dark. Silly amounts of light for the size. Then the Sunwayman V11R, another tiny flashlight that puts out more light than you’d expect. My friend grabbed his Solarforce L1? and that was rather impressive. Well made an a lot of light.
We moved away from the car park to the fields and the bigger toys came out. The FandyFire Rook was quite impressive for the size but I got the Nitecore EA4 out and it knocked spots off of the Rook. Out came the 1000lumen 4d mag. Lovely colour but not a massive amount of light. Out came my friends SkyRay King and I was rather impressed. So much so I’m ordering one shortly. A lovely amount of light from a small size and they are so cheap!
I then upped the ante and got out the TR J18 and lit up the field. That was fun so decided to grab the 85w HID. That disappointed me. So big, such a long warm up time and the light didn’t wow due to the sheer size of the light.
Got the TN31 out and threw a beam as far as you could see. A bit of mist in the air made it hard to throw really far but it had no worries lighting up a line of trees 350m away.
I then got the TK75 out and had a play. I was waiting to get that out as I’ve only ever used it in a street lit housing area. That thing = WOW. It threw a wall of light at the trees 350m away with ease and I’m quite confident that if you was standing at the trees you’d have no worries reading a newspaper from the wall of light.
There was another group of trees at about 600m that was do-able with the TN31, TK75 and the HID but the moisture in the air made all three a lot harder.
So. Expensive torches ARE FUN. I’m glad I got to play with them in the proper dark and I’m glad the TK75 deserves all the hype it gets.
When I left I drove up a 1000m private road to join the public road and I decided to test my cars headlights so went slowly, put on headlights, high beam, fogs etc and lit up the road. I then hung the TK75 out of the window and WOW the TK75 = super bright. I decided to then drive a bit of road just on the TK75. As if that’d be hard. The TK75 put out more useable light than my car so it was a pointless test.
I’m quite happy with the money I’ve spend on my lights now I’ve seen them in the dark.
