I’ve avoided posting so far……
I’m not a fan of pencil beam throwers, despite building a couple, I’m also not to interested in massive flooders in most cases despite having assembled a very serious flooder.
Point 1:- if you really want to get the most out of xp-g2’s for throw and xm-l2’s, and have a light usable for more than ten minutes of constant full output, 1 cell is not going to cut it for long, bump up to two good 18650 or 26650 cells in series, you actually get some usable run time and can hit that 5 or 6a target without voltage sag sucking your output.
There are configurations that both give that output, drop into the right pocket and give a good usable beam, my super flooder is a 40mm 3x18650 tube light that will direct drive till the cells run out, it only throws 100 feet or so, but all that area gets lit up, it makes a skyray king pointless imo.
In comparison my xp-g2 two cell convoy l2 has a 3a driver, alu mcpcb and nw emitter, not really a good start for a thrower……in theory, it destroys anything else I own and is now awaiting me having the time in real life for the next set of experiments. It gives a bright enough spill to happily navigate by and ruins any xm-l thrower I have, next iteration will be using a five amp driver and either a copper mounted nw domed xp-g2 or a copper mounted dedomed xm-l2 u2……I dont know which I’ll prefer till I build up the two to compare, both by eye and lux meter.
The l2 happily fits the breast pockets of my english surplus army jacket, at 5a to the emitter, its only 2.5a/ 26650 cell so voltage sag is negligible and run time is imo brilliant.
This is something I’ve been pondering today, this affection with single cell lights, people even insisting on shortening good multicell lights. They dont balance so well, all the weight is in the head and the dst is one of the worst for this, I feel it’ll give me rsi in single cell mode so I’d sooner stick to the three cell tube and use a good weighted spacer to hamstring the output.
If you really need a stubby thrower, a zy-t08 is a good start, two parallel cells, same head size as a dst, huge pill for whatever single cell driver you pick, I have both a standard ish zy-t08 and an asgard as I liked the form so much, their both goid lights, but for a thrower, I want two things, more voltage and and xp-g2, xm-ls are far too floody.