Will I turn into a Maglite fan once again?

[bykfixer]

Agreed.

So now my Maglite collection is a lot broader and I'm really stoked about what they were doing 8-10 years ago. Nothing wrong in my view with the current crop but stuff like the ML100 just blows my mind here in 2020.

 

[xxo]

Another twist in the LED Solitaire saga, the short lived 40 lumen Solitaire:



I'm guessing that this has a variation of the Luxeon C?

 

[bykfixer]

The 37 lumen was 700+cd, the 47 at 500+cd and the 40 is 800+ so that makes sense xx.

I may have one stashed somewhere. I remember seeing the minimag/solitaire combo pack at WalMart one year but I may not have grabbed any.

A little while ago I heard the dog bark in his "halt who goes there (probably a cat)" bark. And I heard rustling leaves in the neighbors yard so I figured it must me a cat and whipped out my red XL100 with gray XL200 tailcap. Set at about 50% output it was impressive how far it throws even at that level. It's like at 50% (or there abouts) the beam throws nearly as far as at full output without all the side spill interfering with my peripherals like max output does.

 

[xxo]

50% should give you about 75% of the throw.

 

[bykfixer]

I believe it. Twisting to full output definitely shines light farther, but light spreads sideways so much brighter that it does not seem all that much farther.

Like, I can see stuff at 250 feet ok at half throttle but about 300 feet or so at full throttle. Maybe more but sidespill makes the whole world in my view lit up so what my eyes can detect due to extreme contrast between light and dark is seemingly reduced.

 

[xxo]

If you get out a calculator, the exact percentage is 70.7% (square root of .5) based on the inverse square law for light.

 

[bykfixer]

Math makes my brain hurt.

I'm intrigued by the 40 lumen solitaire. I wonder if any made it to retail on their own or if all were in those combo packaging. I'm also thinking I had seen them on clearance (the twin pack that is) after Christmas but opted for a commemorative pocket knife set or something.
It may have been the year Home Depot had twin packs of ML25's. A 2 cell and 3 cell for like $30 or something. I did buy one of those for my pa n law and ended up with a few ML25 parts after he left some low end batteries in them.

Come to think of it that may have been the year that my neice brought her boyfriend at Christmas swearing it was the 3rd time (yet neither Mrs Fixer or I remembered the guy), and we did not have a gift so I may have given him a minimag/ solitaire twin pack I had bought to stash. If so I hope it wasn't the only one I had……

Oh, and it turns out the dog had cornered a possum. I went back outside and saw him playing with a new chew toy that turned out to be a possum playing dead. They're pretty good at it too. It never flinched while I loaded it onto a shovel and dropped it in a curb side container. About 2 hours later I opened the lid and there sat a live possum waiting patiently for me to set it free. So I toppled the container to let it out while Mrs Fixer held the flashlight.

 

[xxo]

Don't know about the 40L Solitaire - apparently they weren't around for long and there is not much info on LED Mags, seems like Mag collectors are mostly into the old incan Mags.

 

[bykfixer]

Yup, there's a much larger following in the vintage Maglite world. It's kinda like being a Trekky where only Captain Kirk matters. My son has a "10 reasons why Picard is better than Kirk" t-shirt and I have a "10 reasons Kirk could kick Picards ***" t-shirt.
Anyway, about the only interest in modern day Maglites with collectors was the 40th anniverssary ML300 edition and most are waiting on that to go on clearance price. As a collector I have a few low volume Maglite LED products but as a user, now that I have discovered a variety of their LED lights in thrower versions I'm all over that.

Thanks for showing that short time 40 lumen solitaire. Is it Marquis rare? Probably not but it would be cool to have one still in the package. Side by side with a 37 it may not be a noticeable difference unless there was something unique about a shape, a stamping or even a way it is regulated.

 

[xxo]

Thanks for showing that short time 40 lumen solitaire. Is it Marquis rare? Probably not but it would be cool to have one still in the package. Side by side with a 37 it may not be a noticeable difference unless there was something unique about a shape, a stamping or even a way it is regulated.

If they were selling them at walmart as one of their Christmas specials, I'm sure there's a bunch of them out there, but there's probably no way to tell them apart from other Solitaires without knowing the serial number range.

 

[bykfixer]

Perhaps it was a Home Depot black Friday thing? I just remember one year it seems like there was a combo pack in a box store around Christmas season and went on clearance in January. My local HD had the 2/3 cell ML25 combo and iirc somebody had the minimag/solitaire combo and it seems to me it was my local Wal Mart. I looked around eBay and Amazon and no 40 lumen solitaires popped up. I thought perhaps there may have been some left over.

Saturday evening I was walking around with my XL100 at half bright marvelling at the throw. Sunday night my dog barked again like the possum was back and my 37 lumen solitaire was handy so I went out back with that and oh my I was amazed. To this point I had done a bunch of side by side stuff for test purposes but had not used it based an its own merit to that point. But when I shined it towards where the dog was barking it was like I was shining my 100 lumen PKDL PL-2 thrower on the yard. Now the PL-2 is good for 15-20 minutes an an alkaline due to it's turbo-esque drain on a battery. An hour on an ultimate lithium but the solitaire is good for an hour on a plain old Rayovac. Slip in an ultimate lithium and good to go for a while.
I went straight to zbattery and ordered a couple more while they still have some. I like how they show quantity remaining.

(BTW a light called PL-1 was an idea at SureFire that never came to fruition due to lack of a battery that could fuel it back then, hence why we never saw a triple a fueled light from SureFire).

 

[bykfixer]

Earlier evening my neighbor 3 doors down had a fire pit going while I was cooking a pair of steaks for the Mrs and I. The burning wood from his yard smelled awesome. Using a 270 lumen floody-ish light to watch the food meant there was no way to say hello to my flashaholic neighbor. What I mean by that is to toss a beam up in the trees over his head kinda like a search light would. I ducked inside to grab an ML25 to say hello. The gen two tried to determine if he and his girlfriend were still outside but I could not tell for certain. I ducked back indoors and traded it for an ML25 and again close but no cigars. The issues were not that the light did not reach them but that all of the spill was masking the fine details at 500 feet.
I ducked back in and grabbed the 2 cell ML100 and viola. I could see two empty (dark brown) chairs. I am still amazed at the potential reach and ability to make out details from the beam of that light.

 

[Chadder]

I forgot how great the throw is from a good ole mag lite. We were spotting deer in a field the other day. I had a 1400 lumen pocket light in my pocket. It was bright but would not light up the deer. I grabbed my 3c cell 611 lumen mag lite and lit them up like a Christmas tree! All the other guys with me were like "what light you got there" I had to say just a good ole maglite. LOL

 

[hsa]

I think a lot of folks would be surprised at what that ML 50l can do. I have spotted hundreds of deer with it. Eyes shining bright.

 

[Chicken Drumstick]

I forgot how great the throw is from a good ole mag lite. We were spotting deer in a field the other day. I had a 1400 lumen pocket light in my pocket. It was bright but would not light up the deer. I grabbed my 3c cell 611 lumen mag lite and lit them up like a Christmas tree! All the other guys with me were like "what light you got there" I had to say just a good ole maglite. LOL

That is more physics than anything. BIG reflectors will throw more. Especially when combined with smaller LEDs.

I'm willing to bet the 1400 lumen light had a small reflector and large LED?

 

[Chadder]

You are correct. Most of my edc carry lights have more flood. I don't need the throw most of the time. But outdoors it comes in handy.

 

[bykfixer]

A Mag-Lite ad

 

[xxo]

The ML50's are also some underrated Mags. As much as I like the ML25, I like the ML50's just as much – the electronic side switches makes the 50's more tactically oriented and the programmable function sets are real nice. The ML50's are bigger than the 25's but you still get that slim C cell form and you have the option of getting grenade gripped/hard ano'd LX versions.

 

[Chicken Drumstick]

A Mag-Lite ad

The photo looks kinda cool at first. But if you study it, there seems to be a lot wrong with it. I'd suggest that it is a 100% marketing lead photo and is either completely fake, or messed about with so much that it might as well be fake.

Super long exposure to make it look so light out if it was dark (even in the distance). But no wobble from the light or movement from the person or dog?? Doesn't make sense. Beam also looks very clearly defined, but somehow not over exposed? And there seems to be no spill beam at all and no light from the flashlight anywhere near the man or dog. Just a laser beam or ray gun effect. Plus I don't believe the tint of the LED would match the colour of the beam pictured either.

 

[bykfixer]

At first I had trouble finding the switch on my ML50's and 300's in the dark since the cover does not poke out like the classic maglite but I got used to it. I like the 50 better than the 300 but still have 300's for the long runtimes if needed.