Hello Vinh
Good to see you here!
I have a Vinh modified M43 Meteor in the “Goldilocks” configuration. At the time I purchased it, it was the most money I had ever paid for a flashlight. Although it’s a few years old now and has been surpassed in raw numbers by several newer lights, it’s still one of my favorite “giggle” lights. It’s very nice to hear from you Vinh and I hope you can find the time to drop in here more often.
I have been wondering Vinh, If you went full on crazy on a Convoy S2+ triple. What kind of numbers would you (or did because I suspect you may have already built one) get for performance? Not so much throw but flood, and lumes.
And how fast would it get to hot to hold on to. 
S2+ Max Output
- Add as much copper to the inside as possible.
- Use 16mm Trim down MCPCB and blow torch the dialectic layers off for HS
- Sand down & solder bond everything. Feed extra solder to all the cavity for a complete fill.
- Use Quad XPL HD on copper MCPCB and solder bond it to pill as well
- Sand down optics diameter to fit
- Open up optics holes to accommodate XPL HD
- Do not reuse glass. Just let optics push against Oring
- Use 22 AWG wires for LEDs
- Use copper nub instead of spring for battery positive on the Driver
- Remove switch from tail cap and touch up connections
- Use teflon wire bypass with a stiff spring. Double spring Are more reliable but still more restrictive.
- Use NO-OX-ID electrically conductive lube for all threads
- Pop in a VTC5A or a comparable Cell
You should get the most Lumen and best heat handling for S2+ set up. However I do not recommend this mod. Stick to a quad head with a solid Copper head. Something like a Manker E14 or Mateminco S03 is more suitable for the purpose. If you don’t like the original optics you can always put in your own MCPCB and swap to the Carclo.
Good to see you here Vinh! Like your S2+ mods - I always use NO-OX-ID as well. One tub from Illumn has lasted me for years. I'm lik'n the VTC5D's (Vapcell branded) or the Samsung 25S's lately.
Have you seen loneoceans' FET based switch with batt voltage monitoring LED's for the S2+? Incredible! I only recently saw it here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/50404
Also might want to check out his boost driver here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/50015, also quite an incredible design, getting 50 watts from a single cell.
Wow…Gotta check those out for sure!
Here is a custom order I just finished
W1 6500K
VN2 Driver
HC (Heated Color)
Good performance but not as impressive as D25Cvn
Beam and tint is excellent though
Thats look pretty…
Skylumen is super kind… when I got my jetbeam dm15, skylumen want to check out the light for photos… I sent it to him…
He installed me a driver vn4 and xpl hi led for FREE.
Purrday :heart_eyes:
Cheers from Seattle!
I am happy to read you on BLF, Vinh. Also glad this thread turned out quite positive and I really hope that 2019 and the upcoming years will see a lot more of you here at BLF. In between all the budget enthusiasts (like me), I am sure there will be additional business for you because you embody our hobby with a great level of dedication and knowledge.
Having frequented the other forum and being relatively new to BLF myself, I am really thrilled there are two forums with a different angle in a niche topic like flashlights.
Actually this is a controversial statement.
Recently we had a discussion on precisely this topic. It started with this:
There are some responses that follow.
I go by watt I SEE. Kcd numbers to me are a guideline and a loose one oft times at that IMO.
I don’t ‘trust’ anyone’s meter over another’s when it comes right down to it. Too many variables.
There’s almost nothing IMO that can replace a real-time comparison photo from a stock light to a modded light - EXCEPT for a real-time human eye comparison of the same.
So, I go by actuals and that ultimately means again being there with that particular flash at the same nighttime darkness levels to do that comparison. Doing any comparisons not simultaneously doesn’t wash with me either - to wit, EVERY night is different.
Watt does all this really mean?
If someone says that they used XYZ modded flash and it lit up XYZ object from XYZ verified distance more so than the sample stock light they also own, I will believe that ‘human meter’ over any other measuring device. I don’t care if it’s NASA grade either.
At the end of the competitive day if and when Enderman and PolarLi eventually meet in The Ring, The Winner will ultimately be decided (hopefully) not by what varying kcd meters say but by what the observing public SEES.
For a general imagining example, there should be a small crowd of people standing around one person holding up a book and each competitor shines their flash on it. Then everyone votes on whose flash lit up the book best for reading the print basically.
Bottomline I more so believe Wolfdog’s real time/real world eyeball “numbers” over any kcd numbers. And I use that ultimate no BS method to “measure” what I own.
Well that’s just the way I roll. Other’s eyes roll differently. 
So when you have someone or a group observe the subject lights in question, do you have the human eyes certified in any way? What about an individual with 20/20 vision, 20/40 vision, wearing prescription glasses, or even with one of the individuals in the crowd that has eye transplants with an American Bald Eagle or a Hawk?
Thanks and Happy Day All.
Well that’s why I said a small crowd. I know we can get into a clinical testing mode here to the max. Contrarily IMO the greater the number of people observing the better.
Call it a smoothing average of human eye imperfect variances which then extrapolates into real world no BS accuracy.
So how many random people do we need to satisfy this adequately?
Any professional statisticians out there? 
Yep, I’d go for the NASA-grade luxmeter, for more accuracy than the human eye can distinguish. That level of accuracy is not always needed in the real world, but the real world can not do it better as above posts suggests but worse (it is in many other posts on BLF as well: a quite general emotion to distrust anything that comes out of a measuring device as opposed to our own crappy human sensors): luxmeters do not measure a different thing than the human eye does, they actually record the same information that we see (if the luxmeter is any good) and then more accurate.
Some might not completely agree in all relevant aspects. :sunglasses: ( Edited for perhaps a better choice of words as your post has absolute solid validity when it comes to NASA-grade anything.)
It does go of course beyond machine recognition which is to say different than lux metering per se.
It also gets more complicated……naturally.
https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/cameras-vs-human-eye.htm
“standard” is the key word here. People used their foot to measure distance. Then we knew no foot are equal. Then we invented ruler. So no matter who you are, big or small, you can always get the same measurements as other do.
Perception can vary GREATLY from person to person, culture to culture, etc…
“It’s far” in a village where everyone still walk is very different from “it’s far” in an urban area where motorized transportation is the norm.
- Clemence