Howdy!
Talk about “leaning in to the strike zone & taking one for the Team”…
I was in Wally last night buying windshield wipers (yeah, it rains here sometimes) and of course I had to stop by the flashlight section.
This one jumped out and begged me to take it home:
The 10-LED reflector plate just begs for some kind of mod:
The LEDs sort-of resemble the old “P4” emitters that used to be popular, but they’re not. Closer inspection (always take your magnifying glasses to the store, Dumbo!!) reveals they seem to be some sort of giant Straw Hats with weird Anode & Cathode… Not sure they’re worth looking up, TBH.
And at a price of $5.48, with a $3.00 battery, I became weak and yielded to temptation of a $2.00 floaty, black plastic mod host.
LET ME PLEASE DISSUADE YOU FROM MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE! JUST SAY “NO!!!” TO THIS DIMLY ANNOYING LUMP!
I’m going to take it apart to see if it’s moddable at all, although it seems to be a kludge front end to a standard PR-based 6v lantern. Most likely I’d use the battery itself as a current-limiting device for a brace of XM-Ls (to keep from wasting a good driver here), but not any time soon!
I’ll not annoy you with beam shots. Not worth the bits on disk to record them, to be honest. Sorry, Ray-O-Vac, but you just completely missed the boat on this one! Up close, the fringe of the beam has a flower-petal effect, with the 10 tiny spots where the LEDs are, and this all “blends” into a ringy, dim, blue-white dot with a way-too-dim spill, at about 3-4 feet, if it even matters., It doesn’t throw worth a damn either, even with the too-tiny “hot” spot.
My POS Ultrafire 501b with a v1 Nanjg-105c (2.8A) and 3C XM-L in an OP reflector, blows this one completely out into the water, where I’d leave it floating as a back-marker to show (briefly) where we’ve been. A new 501b/XM-L/2.8A, which will Throw AND Flood better than this one, can be had for <10USD, so this one’s ~6USD price (w/taxes) is about 3x too high for the light OTF.
Speaking of “floating”, there has been no attempt to seal the threads, so I’m guessing the “float” claim has more to do with the overly-heavy 6v lantern battery weighing the back end down enough to keep the bezel joint above the waterline. If I were to mod it, I’d seal the threads with paraffin & seal the reflector plate with acrylic caulk (to avoid possible damage from silicone’s VOCs)…
Speaking of the battery, I can see where this one would give amazing battery life, as most owners would likely never turn it on after the first couple of times!
IFF I can afford the 10 XM-Ls, in a variety of tint bins (the better to ultimately achieve a reasonable facsimile of “White” light), this could be an interesting boat/trunk/shed light…
Of course, that means this $2.00 host would become a ~$30.00+ show-off, and still not be sealed against water/dust intrusion… Hopefully by then it will outperform a low-end P60…
For now, NRN as I may ultimately delete this entire thread for lack of interest (on my part); but I wouldn’t want to see any of my friends here get fooled like I was!
Thanks for reading!
Dim