Classic.
In case of (clean) water inside something you don’t want it, just get yourself a couple of the cheapest rice you can find dump them in a plastic bag, place object in it and close bag. Leave for at least 24 hours and all should be gone.
I’ve been using this light for about 2 weeks now and my only criticism of it is that I haven’t found a good way yet to sling it to free up my 2nd hand. It took a little while to figure out how to reliably get to the med’ output, but it’s old hat now.
I’m still blown away by the full output from such a small light every time I use turbo; most times I either use low or med’ and that’s plenty of light. It gets warm very fast, but that’s a good thing and it tells me that the light is doing what it should be doing.
The finger-on-lit experiment is not an equivalent of what happens between ledboard and pill because your finger forms neatly into the shape of the lid and the system will never conduct heat better with whatever you put in between, and pressing harder will not make conductance better (the level of contact is already maximal), but it just presses the pain nerve ends closer to the heat source. On the other hand a ledboard is rigid and the worse the match is between board and pill the more improvement you get from a thermal paste because it gets in the place of ever larger air pockets. As I understand (I do not own a M43) board and pill match almost perfectly, both are completely flat, so an extremely thin layer of quite runny paste that just fills the scratches in the surface will perform best, nothing more is needed.
Lots of words on, ehm, things 
My thoughts on why the finger-on-lid experiment is not the best model of what happens in a flashlight were in the bla…bla…bla… btw.
I’m just curious as to why thermal paste makes such a difference when used between semiconductors and heatsinks, plus beeing absolutely necessary to avoid overheating of the semiconductors?
I’ve been thinking about this for some time as well. One phenomenon in the flashlight world is copper DTP; so two things at once, copper and DTP. With a standard aluminium ledboard the led will go poof when over driving. This is not the case with copper DTP. Perhaps copper DTP is a large part of the heat transfer system that protects the led, so the presence of thermal grease becomes much less significant?
So you don’t have a copper DTP system in the semiconductor/heatsink world, therefore making thermal grease a vital component of the system?
High performance heatsinks often have copper cores.
Copper DTP/led is a single solid (reflow) structure with good thermal conductivity (qualitative), and a large cooling surface (quantitative) of the ledboard with the shelf compared to the led itself. Therefore the presence of thermal grease is perhaps less significant.
So if you would solder the semiconductor to a copper DTP (hypothetical, probably doesn’t exist), where the size of this board is much larger than the semiconductor itself, and then you would place this to a heatsink, then thermal grease would become less significant I think.
Edit:
By doing the latter, the heat transfer rate per unit surface reduces significantly as you have more total surface. And by doing so you reduce reaching the limit of the heat transfer rate which requires the use of thermal grease.
Long story short: The Meteor handles heat well. The thinness of its goop is a feature, not a bug.
Replacing a joint that has X°C/W with one that has (X+delta)°C/W in a flashlight that produces Y Watt always results in an increase of delta*Y °C regardless of other components in the system. If you’re at the limit of either LED or body temperature, such replacement will decrease maximum wattage proportionally to the increase of thermal resistance of the entire path, so actually thermal grease is more important with copper DTP boards.
I somehow got mine into this weird mode:
- There’s only one brightness level.
- Double clicking or press and holding turns the light off and switch flashes red 5 times, then orange.
- Can’t get it out of this mode no mater what combination of clicks I do.
- Had to disconnect the battery by turning the head to go back to normal.
Anyone know what this mode is and what it’s for? I have no idea how I got into it, but I was messing with the strobe and tactical modes, then this happened.
See video below:
How strange, my Meteor never did this until yesterday.
I put it into turbo mode and after approx’ 4 seconds it’ll rapidly blink twice. I can’t figure out what I did to get it to do that, but I don’t much care for it.
Does anyone know how to get it out of it?
This indicates that thermal protection is kicking in, or that the driver is reducing output due to low cells.
See page 7 of the manual for more info.
You can turn off the double-blink of the main LEDs with 12 clicks and a hold.
No to the red pulses, this happens when the light is at room temp’.
FWIW, I’m in mode 3.
Hmm, I just tried it again and no blinking. I wonder if the switch was making intermittent contact? And just again, no blinking. It must have been me on the switch. But it was so consistent I thought for sure it had to be something electronic. I’ll keep a watchful eye on it. It certainly isn’t doing it now. Maybe my thumb was off to the side of the switch or some such. Operator error.
Just tried it again, no blinking. I hang my head in shame :person_facepalming: for the false alarm, but it happened every time I went to turbo and incredibly consistent in behavior. It was driving me nuts.
As far as I know there are 3 reasons for the rapid double blink:
1) Temperature step-down at 50 C, which means roughly about a minute and a half in turbo mode.
2) Step-down due to low cell voltage: voltage reduces with depleting cell, and boost driver is not able to compensate this by increasing current. From my measurement this happens roughly at 3.5V resting voltage (GA or 30Q).
3) Seemingly a “cold” flashlight could cause double blinking as well. When the light from off (non-used state for some time) immediately is switched to turbo, the light double blinks on a regular basis after about a couple of seconds. When I switch light off and on again, it never blinks again. So this only happens with a “cold” M43. I have several M43, and this happens on more than one light. I think this is an anomaly without consequences, and I’ve never read about it.
Thanks!
The 3rd situation fits what’s been going on. After it warms from use, even slightly (so it seems), it appears to go away.
Thanks again, I’ll just live with it then.
Hmm, maybe it has an 8-bit temperature value somewhere which wraps around when it’s too cold. That could make it act a little odd when cold.
Before X7, MK34, etc…M43 is the perfect light now it is still the perfect light to me due to it being the smallest in size i meant 4x18650 size light . IMO even the X80’s throw can’t match M43 I’m guessing except for the spill X80 could be the winner. Awesome! 
Sorry just wanna subscribe to this thread. But what I said is true M43 is still the best light to me after using it for almost a year. 
AFAIK i have never used or seen such mode in the manual before. Mine could be 2nd generation S4 3D version. Not sure.