Mmmm tactical lights...

madcap_magician

madcap_magician

Farts rainbows.
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Why 'allo thar!

Anyway... I'm a newly hired security guard... no commando or anything, just do a little bit of patrolling and a lot of desk work checking in the drunks at school. I was working patrol at a football game, and came to the realization that I needed ... FLASHLIGHTS! YES! I can't retrieve people's crap from under the bleachers without seeing what I'm doing!

See, there is a natural progression. Before I got to bladeforums, all those 440A knives and S&W horse crap etc, etc was good enough for me... and then I registered. So I went from knives... which I'm still much too far into for my own good... to martial arts equipment... which didn't last as long because I'm no longer in an active dojo... and now to flashlights.

$160 later, I now have an Inova X5 and a T4 coming from TADgear. I liked the tactical light illumination coming from an LED light- I mean, 100 lumens from an LED cluster? That's awesome. And having a good rechargeable makes me happy- those damn camera batteries are expensive.

So what do you guys think? Good choices?
 
Absolutely good choices. Just remember that you can get good quality CR123 batteries very cheaply online, a little over a buck apiece.
 
Really? Where are you getting them from? I kinda wanted some of the good ones- the generic ones never seem to work as well.

Only thing that pisses me off is that there isn't a tailcap switch for the T4, but I guess on an 8" flashlight that wouldn't work as well.
 
buy an X1....

AA batts, much cheaper than the cr123a lithiums the x5 runs.
getting about 10hrs to a batt with my x1, ran the first set to "dim" and was 12hrs in.

on top of the batt availability, you can hold your x1 in your mouth when you need both hands free. The x5 gets uncomfortable after about a minute like that.

doesn't mean I don't have the x5 in my bag though.
 
The high end LED lights are great, especially for every day use. I think it's a good idea to also have a powerful incandescent-bulb light too, like a SureFire G2 Nitrolon for when you absolutely need very bright, white light.
 
I thought about getting one of the Nitrolons, too. I went with the LED Inovas mostly because I probably won't need them too terribly often and I don't want to have to deal with rapidly dimming bulbs. Plus, it would spend a lot of time as a regular use flashlight, and therefore a run time measured in minutes is a bad thing.

I wish there was a red filter for the Inovas, though. I didn't want to get a separate one, but every semester I go play in the mud at Fort McCoy, and we're officially in a tactical environment and are only allowed red lensed lights. So once a semester I need a red flashlight, but I don't need it often enough to justify buying one that's only red... I thought about a red Photon II, but that's not big enough for some of what we do.
 
I always have at least three sources of light on me when I leave the house. Redundancy is good! I still need to get a good quality, powerful LED, though. I'm waiting for the prices to come down a little more.
 
If you do get the Nitrolon G2, don't throw away your depleted 123A's -- just save them to use in your Inova X5T. They will work fine for many hours. It's like powering the Inova for free. (I never use fresh batteries in mine.)
 
If I were working as a security guard I would also carry a 3 or 4 D cell mag lite with an everLED luxeon bulb replacement
 
bladefixation2 said:
If I were working as a security guard I would also carry a 3 or 4 D cell mag lite with an everLED luxeon bulb replacement
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Correction: I'm working as a school security guard. We're all students. If we bashed someone over the head with a Maglite, we'd be fired so fast we wouldn't know what hit us. About the only time we could justify that would be if we got personally attacked. We're not trained to employ that level of force.

EDIT: All the same, not wanting to be without some sort of mostly surreptitious self defense, I grabbed one of the TID attachments that TADgear had for the X5T... :shifty:... I figured, hey, the X5T is built like a tank, the LEDs and the body aren't going to break, and it's not like I couldn't afford to replace it anyway, $30 is a relief after my start in custom knives, lol. Plus it's like a palm stick, you don't need to be terribly knowledgeable to use it effectively.

Esav Benyamin said:
If you do get the Nitrolon G2, don't throw away your depleted 123A's -- just save them to use in your Inova X5T. They will work fine for many hours. It's like powering the Inova for free. (I never use fresh batteries in mine.)
Click to expand...

Ooh... thank you, that's brilliant...
 
madcap_magician said:
Correction: I'm working as a school security guard. We're all students. If we bashed someone over the head with a Maglite, we'd be fired so fast we wouldn't know what hit us. About the only time we could justify that would be if we got personally attacked. We're not trained to employ that level of force.
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I didnt necessarily mean for SD purposes, the batteries are a lot less likely to run out on you when you need them most if you have 30+ hours of runtime over maybe 1 hour.

WRT self defence, you mention you have fitted a TID to your inova. If I were managing you and you arent meant to have weapons and I saw that your ass would be out the door whether you had hit someone or not, If I saw a maglite I wouldnt even look twice. Irrispective of how much anyone knows about flashlights its pretty obvious what the TID is for, and its not for scratching your back...

Maglites arent 'tactical', sharp, pointy or particularly agressive looking. Most households probably have one. Everybody has seen one even if they dont own one. You can buy one from your local DIY shop... If someone complains that you have or have used a serrated 'tactical' flashlight what can your supervisor say? If they complain you have a maglite then so what? its a flashlight, its not marketed as a weapon, its not designed specifically as a weapon, its not even optimised as a weapon any more than any other long thin item is (stick, chair leg, bit of pipe) This difference makes all the difference in the perception of others
 
bladefixation2 said:
I didnt necessarily mean for SD purposes, the batteries are a lot less likely to run out on you when you need them most if you have 30+ hours of runtime over maybe 1 hour.

WRT self defence, you mention you have fitted a TID to your inova. If I were managing you and you arent meant to have weapons and I saw that your ass would be out the door whether you had hit someone or not, If I saw a maglite I wouldnt even look twice. Irrispective of how much anyone knows about flashlights its pretty obvious what the TID is for, and its not for scratching your back...

Maglites arent 'tactical', sharp, pointy or particularly agressive looking. Most households probably have one. Everybody has seen one even if they dont own one. You can buy one from your local DIY shop... If someone complains that you have or have used a serrated 'tactical' flashlight what can your supervisor say? If they complain you have a maglite then so what? its a flashlight, its not marketed as a weapon, its not designed specifically as a weapon, its not even optimised as a weapon any more than any other long thin item is (stick, chair leg, bit of pipe) This difference makes all the difference in the perception of others
Click to expand...

I don't know, all my experience with maglites has been really irritating because after about two hours of use, even noncontinuous, the light fades out too much. I've had a lot better experience with LEDs. Though someone over on candlepowerforums told me something about an LED conversion for a D cell maglite, and that would be interesting to see... Plus a D cell maglite, while nice, is a little heavy to be lugging around. The Inova and the TID are stored in a belt sheath with a flap, and frankly, most people wouldn't know why the TID is there anyway. It's just a flashlight, and the TID isn't actually very distinctive. It's sort of like 'tactical' knives. If you don't call attention to it, not as many people notice. But if you whip it out and do something fancy, people get scared.

I will experiment to verify my opinion on that, but I sincerely believe that if it's dark, and I pull out a flashlight with a TID, no one will notice or care- it's obvious why I just pulled out a flashlight.
 
Its true that 'tactical' lights are easier to carry

If you are interested in coverting a maglite to LED the easiest way is to buy an everLED bulb, they are just a direct bulb replacement, semi regulated 1w luxeon side emitter. You dont have to modify the mag lite body and can change back to a regular bulb easily.

It also significantly increases battery life and the output stays high for most of the battery life rather than slowly getting dimmer with the standard maglite bulb. The manufacturers site claims 25 hours of high output on 2D cells. I havent timed mine so I cant comment on that however.

I have one in a 2D cell maglite, it makes an amazing difference. I dont know why mag lite didnt buy everLED out!

One thing to note is the output is the same whatever number of cells you install it into, the runtime will be longer in bigger maglites however.

www.everled.com
 
I have been buying my CR123 batteries directly from Sure Fire; as they are like $1.25 a piece. I buy a box of 'em. I would also recommend some kind of Sure Fire flashlight for your security duties.
 
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