So, a few of you might have heard I was stuck in Brazil for the last 8 months or so (roughly summer-winter in the Southern Hemisphere, therefore the title).
Now that I’m back in Chile for a couple of days already, I thought I might share with you some of my more flashlight-related experiences, to wit (not in any particular order):
- Bought a pair of Lumintop 14500 900mAh USB-C batteries from AliExpress; yep, in the past I vowed never to buy anything from AE ever again, but I needed those to replace my old microUSB also from Lumintop that suddenly developed a very high internal discharge all by itself, and AE was the only source that could deliver it to Brazil with reasonable cost – so I decided to risk it. In the end it took 15 days and arrived with no issues.
- My trusty TS10v1 started developing what seemed like switch issues (sometimes not turning on, other times not turning off, etc) so I bought a new one (a TS10v2 this time);
- Along with the TS10 I bought a new FC13; I already had one, but saw their “last batch!” announcement at their product page, so I decided to buy another one as a spare (I use my FC13 extensively and would hate to be without one if/when it breaks or gets lost). Was not able to buy with the SFT40 LED, so I got one with the XHP50.2 5000K instead;
- Met a long-time friend who only then I found out to be a flashlight-maniac too; helped him with a flashlight-unrelated issue and he was so happy that he gifted me a Nitecore TM20K; in response, I bought a pair of D3AAs from Hank (one for me and one for him) and gifted him with a full kit (flashlight, normal & magnetic tailcap, clip, plus a white diffuser I had a spare for my TS10 with a 3D-printed adapter so it would fit in his D3AA, plus a Vapcell H10 battery for the turbo and a F12 for the capacity, plus a Liitokala Lii-100 charger, and finally a 3.3V UPDI USB flashing kit from theFreeman modded to work with the D3AA. He really liked it!
- The L10 and F12 batteries and the Liitokala charger I bought from Simon Mao @Convoy; The D3AAs I got directly from Hank. All of them arrived in time (the D3AAs via Fedex in just 5 days! and the batteries plus charger via 4PX in 20 days);
- Found a local electronics shop to mod the 3.3V UPDI adapter to work at 5V so it would be able to flash the D3AA;
- Found a local 3D printing shop to print a TS10-to-D3AA head diameter adapter; their work was so good that I also had them make a couple of 14500-to-18650 battery adapters so, in an emergency, I can recharge my TS10 and D3AA batteries in my Wurkkos FC13.
- Frustrated by rough threading behavior with my FC13 and my TS10, I searched extensively for and found a REALLY EXPENSIVE local supply of authentic Nyogel 760G; at least the quantity was so small that I don’t have to worry about it lasting forever
Well, that just about sums it up. I already wrote a bit in theFreeman topic about the adapter modding; I plan to write more about my other experiences above with info that might be useful for someone else in the same predicament or with the same needs.
Thanks for reading!
