I killed my last set of boots at the beginning of last winter, and the good folks at Platatac had a boot-and-flashlight deal, which I jumped on, and came away with one of these beauties, the Surefire 6PX.
At first I felt pretty flippant about it. Sure, its a pretty
hard-looking piece of kit. Machined and anodized. Then I noticed a
couple of things. The bezel had a line of beading around the lip,
spacers, and a warning on the insert said that it gets HOT. It also said
something to the effect that the flash was sufficient to act as an
emergency weapon.
The
action is at the butt-end, with a screw-down-to-turn-on cap, that also
has a button, for momentary on/off, once its screwed down to a certain
point. This gives you the "PEW PEW PEW" functionality to strobe a room
that you can't quite make out, or night-blind a person coming in your
front door unannounced. The first time I tried the light, I was
immediately impressed with both the intensity of the light (200 lumens
is a LOT of light for such a little package) and also the spread of
light.
It gives a tight spot, as well as a diffused
wide-angle, and the light from the tight spot will reflect to fill a
average sized room very nicely in its own right. I took it outside and
lit up the neighborhood, illuminating everything in my line of sight one
by one, rooftop to treetop, power line to street sign. I almost knocked
a possum off a wire, it was so bright. The emitter end does get warm
though, but the metal body acts as a good heat sink. I'll be sure not to
leave it face-down and on!
I leave it with a lanyard
loop attached to my secondary set of keys, in an internal pocket of my
vest, where I can pull it out and use it, great for those "dropped
something in the dark" moments but the most fun I've had with it was
when at LRP Lasertag, strapping it to the end of my tagger (just with
cable-ties, as I don't have a mount for it -yet-) and sweeping rooms
with it. It really works!
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