FIRST LUX MEASUREMENTS:
I did a very quick test last night at 140m distance, first I got ~5Mcd, but after one quick eyeballed focusing job I got it up to 7.5Mcd!
380 lux @ 140m (measured with a laser meter and also google maps).
Since the reflector collects light all the way to 85 degrees off-center from the LED, the lux is very sensitive to focus.
.
Once I get smaller tubing which doesn’t push on the reflector edge I will do more lux measurements at 500m, hopefully this distance will make the focus have less of an effect.
Instead of just guessing the focus like last night, I will also try adjusting the focus while someone (on a phone call) tells me the lux at 500m so that I know when I find the sweet spot.
Hopefully this can get me above 10Mcd which I was hoping for.
.
If I switch it to a CFT90 I will probably still get above 5Mcd, but the beam will be 5x brighter which will be really sweet.
The focusing will also be easier since the LED is 9x larger.
Comparison to the Optofire:
You can see that the reflector removes all chromatic aberration that the Optofire had, and also the yellowish tint that the wavien collar gives.
The beam doesn’t seem much brighter though, since the intensity per area is halved compared to the Optofire (which uses a wavien collar), and instead simply has more area making the beam wider.
After getting as much candela as possible with the black flat, I will switch it to CFT90 in order to get a more visible beam just for fun.