Page 7 - DRVC Travelore Winter 2019

DRVC Travelore - Page 7
Shedding Light on the Subject
Review of a Flashlight
By Rod B. Kenly, President
You might think I’ve run out of things to talk about. How- ever, this has been lurking in the back of my mind for the last couple of months. Please read on...
Everyone has at least one flashlight in their coach. (If
you don’t, go get one now.) For over 30 years, I’ve carried two or three (sometimes even four) MagLite three D-cell kind flashlights in my coach. They sit below the wife’s seat – besides the door. Typically one has new batteries, the second has older batteries, and the third has low batteries; based on the light that it throws.
Of course, a MagLite can be heavy. Mine are big and impossible to put in my mouth when I need that extra arm I don’t have.
It’s possible to purchase a ton of different small flash- lights – they are at the checkout stand at Walmart, etc. They typically run on 1 or 2 AA batteries and can be fairly bright.
Since I like having a flashlight available all the time, I started looking around for something that I could carry around and know that it will work when I pull it out. The important part is being able to carry it.
I mentioned this to my son one day and, what do you know, for Christmas 2017 he gave me a Fenix PD 35 – which is about 5” long and has two rechargeable batteries. He used the same model where he worked. It was bright. It had five output settings – including the brightest at 1000 lumens. Trust me, 1000 lumens will hurt your eyes. To compare, the three-battery MagLite puts out about 175 lumens!
Back to the Fenix – the downside is that it gets hot. If you want 1000 lumens – it will discharge the batteries in about 20 minutes! At the lower levels, it will go for hours. It can be placed in your mouth though it can seem a little heavy.
As I mentioned above, the MagLite couldn’t be put in my mouth! Well, it seems that I’m always poking around in a storage bay for something and, to keep both hands free,
I prop the flashlight somewhere or try to put it in my mouth. (You know what I’m talking about.) The MagLite is too big and the Fenix is borderline – and, it gets hot.
Move with me to 2019. My birthday is in June and my
son gave me a new flashlight. A Streamlight ProTac. It is smaller in size than two lip balms end-to-end. It is also rechargeable by using the USB port. It lasts for months on a charge – and recharges in a few hours. It is also rela- tively inexpensive. My son bought it on Amazon and paid about $30. It’s not as cheap as the $6 flashlights you see in Walmart, but it is smaller and better.
It can be easily held in my mouth – which I’ve done – but more importantly, it has a double
clip on it – it can be stuck in a
shirt pocket or it can be clipped on
the bill of a cap. Therefore, it can
shine the light right where you are
looking! Its output is about 250
lumens, which is brighter than the
MagLite, but not as bright as the
Fenix. However, it will shine well at 250 lumens for many hours before recharging.
So, I now have three things in my right-front pants pocket – my lip balm, my pocketknife, and my Streamlight ProTac flashlight. I highly recommend it.
By the way, there are many different models of Stream- light flashlights. Some use alkaline batteries and some, like mine, use lithium and are rechargeable via USB. The ProTac name is based on its use as a tactical light by first responders and the military. In general, they are less than five inches long and weigh less than two ounces.
The photo at the lower left shows the actual size comparison between the Streamlight ProTac (l) and the MagLite 3D model. The Streamlight can be clipped on the bill of a cap.