Review: Streamlight - Wedge flashlight

Sharpie for Scale

I'd been without an EDC flashlight since loaning mine to Tactical Baby for school camp, never to be heard of again. (the light, not the TB, she had a blast). I made do with a petrol-station bargain bin LED light that was usually functional but not especially bright or reliable. So when an opportunity came up to  try out another I jumped at it. I had never heard of Streamlight or their Wedge light but as soon as I looked it up I knew it was the next light or me.

 

I liked the look of its sleek but robust design, bulkier than a pen-light and that it looked like it was designed for both pocket and PALS/MOLLE carriage. I have a Fellhoelter bolt-action pen light on my Hazard 4 chest harness (which is pretty much my principle EDC go-to), but its not much more than a "dropped my keys" or pupil-dilation checking tool. 

The Wedge has a pleasant solid heft to it at 4oz (113.4g) and it fits the hand nicely, with the finger groves fall naturally into index and pointer fingers, placing the wheel button squarely under the thumb. The heel of the palm seats the butt-end of the light, tucked in securely by the pinkie finger. It measures 5 4/5"X 2/5"X ~1" (13.87 x 1.52 x 2.54 cm) overall, ( not counting the subtle pen clip ( which is reversible for lefties or righties). I tend to wear it in my front right pants pocket with the short paracord loop easily hookable for easy access. A month of daily carry has worn the anodizing of the tip, to zero functional effect.

candle Mode 

The light is activated by rolling the wheel button forward to the stable mid point, producing a bright, clear white light rated at  300 Lumen. This is the Constant-On Mode, which has a 3 hour runtime. When engaged, a small green LED behind the wheel is illuminated. This seems redundant as the main emitter LED is very clear. My own testing has the battery life lasting over 4 hours but 3 hours is a safe benchmark.  The green LED shifts to red when battery life is low, which is a nice feature. Even after my 4 hour test it wasn't especially hot either which was nice, the heat-sink of the all metal body works well. 

Standard mode activate

The built-in Lithium Polymer batteries are charged via a recessed, waterproofed USB-C port in the butt of the Wedge. When charging, the behind-the-wheel LED is red until full charge at which point the indicator light goes green.

But this is where the extra distance on the wheel button comes in. If you push the wheel beyond the constant-on mid-point, you activate the THRO, (Temporarily Heightened Regulated Output) mode. This kicks the constant-on 300 Lumen up to a dazzling 1000 Lumen output. Light throw is rated at 225' (69m) at constant-on and 360' (110m) in THRO mode. One thing that impressed me was the wide cone of light, with the main cone being around 120 degrees wide, with a secondary cone at around 160 degrees. This extra wide beam provides for an almost full room coverage from a doorway, which is very handy for those "bump in the night" investigations or "where did that battery roll under the bed" searches.

The constant-on setting is standard, with the THRO mode requiring constant forwards pressure to maintain it, such that an initial push forwards may move directly to THRO-mode then back to constant-on. This isn't too much of an issue, but I did find that some finesse was required to switch it on without moving to THRO-mode, or flickering ON/OFF. That can be a little annoying, specifically because when I want light, I want constant, stable light NOW. 

THRO mode active: wider, brighter, longer

Another thing I like about this light is its slim but not skinny-size making it convenient to deploy in a pocket, on a belt or even in the channels of PALS/MOLLE. Perfect for placement on a chest-rig or on a pouch. It's a snug fit, especially on a rigid surface, but that adds to the security of it's carry. The para-cord fob allows for easy draw, and just like that you have the utility of a bright sharp white light at the slide of a thumb.

The base of the light, even with its recessed USB-C charging port and pen clip sits flat nicely allowing the Wedge to be stood up in "candle mode" and given it's wide arc, it will illuminate a whole tent, room or goodly sized cave. 

MOLLE carry

The lens glass is slightly inset from the rim of the frame, offering it some measure of protection against  scratches and impacts. Whilst I wouldn't recommend using it as such  I suppose one could grip it like a kubaton for self defense purposes. Every tool is a weapon if your imagination can stretch far enough. It's not going to do you as a set of brass knuckles, but if you ice-pick your grip you'll make a bit of a impact focus point, even if you have to drive the switch with your pinky. Good for temple-indexing, OK for cool. 

ergonomics

I really like how the light indexes in my hand, how easy it is to activate and the sheer volume of the light it emits. It is certainly one of the most powerful lights (especially for its size) that I've had. Its sleek form factor makes it unobtrusive and easy carry and quick to deploy. My only complaint would be that the thumb switch slips back from ON to OFF too easily, if its not seated quite right. This may "wear-in" over time, and hopefully in the right direction, but isn't enough to put me off this light. I've subsequently found that flicking it to "ON" then getting my thumb of the dial reduces this stutter effect, so i'm willing to concede some user error may be in play here

One last thing, if you ever felt the need to illuminate your brain, the emitter end will fit up the standard adult nostril and will light your honker up like Rudolph. Tastes like Crayons too.

Review: Outdoor Expedition - Universal Solar Multi-Bottle

Passing by a closing-down sale at a local camping goods outlet store I wandered in and snapped up a couple of deep-discount bargains, which included a pair of the Universal Solar Multi-Bottle which I thought would make excellent camp-lanterns, specifically for Tactical Baby and Triceratops Girl.

What drew me to them was that the "bottle" component was a squishy, pliant silicone material, making it drop-bounce, trip and generally woops-prone kid proof.

We don't all get out camping together very often, but even around the Bunker, we often go on night-time expeditions. There is a Tawny Frogmouth Owl nesting in a big tree down the block, and the stroll out to listen to it's call is made much jollier (and safer for little people on the pavement) by their very own light.

The area Triceratops Girl lives in is prone to tree-fall power-outages, and the Bunker has some wiring problems, so we both experience blackouts, and having personal lights for the girls makes a possibly frightening inconvenience into a fun excuse for lanterns.

The Multi-bottle is constructed of a soft, collapsible TPE body  which can be squashed down for easy storage and transport, and has a hard plastic "cap" which houses the LED lights, the battery and the solar panel.

The solar panel is fitted to the centre of the lid, and is somewhat covered by the removable handle strap, which can be removed not only to expose the panel to sunshine for charging but also hook over any number of hanging points.

The on-off button is set into the top of the lid as well, and has a built in changing status light, saving space. When the lid is unscrewed you have access to the micro-USB changing slip, which is protected by a silicone plug.

I suspect you -could- store liquid in the bottle in a pinch, but I would worry about it getting into the charging port and shorting out. The unit is described as having a IPX7 waterproof rating, which is 30 minutes at 1m depth, but again, I suspect that is only from the outside, when sealed up. Good enough for any amount of weather or looking for your keys dropped into a pond, not for diving ...

The LED light has3 modes, controlled by the indicator-light button on the lid.: low/high/pulse. It is listed as having:
4 hour runtime at HIGH setting
10 hour runtime at LOW setting
and I infer it has ~days runtime on PULSE setting, it wasn't listed.

The outputs of the two settings weren't offered, but I didn't really notice a significant difference. If it was 75 lumen vs 100 lumen, there wasn't much in it.

Shining through the TPE bottle gave the lights a nice diffuse glow, as well as the bottle itself being a glowing ball, good for both seeing your immediate surrounds but also letting people see you, good news when the primary goal was putting it into small hands to carry around.
The handle clipped on and off at either end, and was not at all difficult for 5yo Tactical Baby to manipulate, or carry.

We don't typically genderise the kit for the kids, but as it happened, only the pink bottles were available at the sale. Green or blue are also available.

These bottles have a carry capacity of 725mL (44cu in) so you could also fit a bunch of small items in it to make a bug-out-jar type effect, although that would block out a bunch of the light the emitted, and you would want to watch out for pointy items. At the very least you can store its USB cord inside, so it's all ready to charge when you have a power-source handy.

These are neat little lights, perfect for little hands in the wilderness of the woods or suburbs.

Review: PowerPractical - Luminoodle

As first seen on Breach Bang & Clear ...

It might sound like a silly name, but the Power Practical Luminoodle is a serious product. At its heart, it's pretty simple. Take a 5-foot length of flexible circuit, string it with 26 LED's, give it a dual sided USB power plug, and sheath it in a waterproof case. Unlike a hand held flashlight, or a dangling lantern, having a flexible string of LED's means you can put a band of light where you want it, just where you want it and keep it there. That's what the folks at Power Practical have done. More than that, they put a fair bit of thought into how you'd actually use the thing.

I have a couple of other innovative pieces of kit from Power Practical; their power generating thermoelectric cook pot, the Power Pot XL, and a USB power regulator, the Practical Meter.

It's quite a nifty piece ...

Read the rest of my review on Breach Bang & Clear, here:

Wish-Lust: ZyntonyRa light Strips

Ok, I was contacted by the people from Zyntony, who had launched a bad-assed light Kickstarter, and not had it make its threshold,  but they are back with a brand new product, that has already surpassed it's threshold, by 287% at time of writing, but I wanted to give them some more bandwidth with the info from their press-release.

Their new offering, the Zyntony Ra is a game-changing light for outdoor adventure enthusiasts that is designed to light up the entire area around you instead of just a spot in front of you.

At full power, Ra puts out 800 lumens of warm natural light. A pair of Ra attached to the shoulder straps of a backpack boast a staggering 1,600 lumens of light creating a “zone of daylight” around the wearer. “This is brighter than ten good headlamps”, one of the founders exclaimed in their release. He continued: “We named the light Ra after the Egyptian god who carries the sun across the sky because carrying one of these lights is like carrying a piece of the sun with you.”

I've covered similar strip lighting projects before, in the PackLight but the Ra is a step beyond.

Multiple mounting options enable Ra to be attached almost anywhere. The user can fix it to any ferrous object using the built-in rare-earth magnets. Ra can be attached to nearly any article of clothing using the accompanying magnetic backer strip, just by slipping the backer-strip under the outer-layer of clothing, and the Ra snaps into place magnetically. Using the D-ring strap and simple hook and loop ties, Ra can be fastened to virtually any piece of gear.

Each of the emitters can put out well over 500 lumens each. So in theory, the light could put out over 2,500 lumens. However, they are only running them at slightly over 1/4 power. Zyntony state they do this for several reasons:

First, is that the emitters are way more efficient - (in that they have a much higher lumens-per-watt output) at lower power. This means that you get a brighter light and longer battery life compared to a light that only has one or two emitters.

Second, by running them at lower power, their life is significantly extended to the point that they will virtually last forever (immortal buyers beware...).

Third, multiple emitters allow for each one to have a separate light dispersion pattern. This allows a less complex and more cost-effective way to balance light spread vs. throw, especially good given its area-effect design principle.

And fourth, by having multiple emitters running at lower power, you can spread out your heat dissipation, also especially useful if you're wearing it.


Ra is powered via a micro-USB input. Zyntony makes four different sizes of battery packs allowing the flexibility to carry just the power you need or as much as you want.

The Ra is designed to be lightweight to facilitate attaching it wherever you want so there is no internal power. It must be powered via USB. By connecting to a power pack via the USB, Ra has the flexibility where you can select a small BatPak for just the power you need or a larger one for as much power as you want. And you can connect up to three Ra's to BatPak II, BatPak III and BatPak IV. That flexibility supports a lot of different mounting options.

Zyntony are planning to certify the Ra to IPX7 which means it is submersible to 1 meter. It will certainly withstand the rain. The USB ports are the biggest challenge they are facing in this but by planning to use rubber boots/escutcheons on both Ra and the BatPaks, it should be waterproof as long as you use the Zyntony USB cable and power pack.

I'm really looking forwards to seeing what they can do when I get a set in-hand, but for mow, their on my wish-lust list!


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zyntony/ra-worlds-first-strap-light/description

Review: DOSS DMP7 Dynamo radio

For quite some time, I have been missing a key element in my survival kit.

Knives, lights, radios, pouches, oh my. Everything but a radio, as it happens. So when I saw a dynamo powered radio on ZAZZ, I jumped right onto it.

This is the DOSS dmp7 dynamo multifunctional radio / music-player. 

It is more than just a radio though, and it is jam-packed with extra features.

As well as a scanning (no dials or even readouts) AM/FM radio, it also has a SD card slot and USB port to play solid-state media music, and a 3.5mm stereo auxiliary input port.

A push button selector cycles through the input types and similarly, the scanning forwards and backwards is by push-button. I found this a bit difficult to use, or at least awkward, to try to find a station I was specifically after.

Each side cap features a LED lamp, also push button controlled. The left side is white and continuously lit.

The right side features four flashing red LED's and also activates a siren, which is both loud and annoying. Perfect, really. At full charge, the siren will play for 3 hours.

The unit features a 1000mAh 3.7V lithium polymer battery internally, but can also take four AA batteries as well. Power status indicators on the front also show how well the hand-cranking dynamo is working on your manual charge.

It also will charge USB devices with an output of 5VDC /500mA.

The radio will play for 7 hours, the torch will last 15 hours and the SD/aux playback will run for 3-5 hours.

Made of a pretty lightweight ABS plastic, and with exposed seams throughout, this is not really a rugged piece. More suited to sitting in the glove-box or in the box of camping gear than for treks in the Amazon, or salvage runs into Chernobyl, but given the eternal nature of the dynamo as a power source, not only for the radio, lights but also as a charging station, this little multi-purpose device is a welcome addition to my just-in-case collection. You never know when the power will go out, and radio is an excellent source of news and information.

Review: Power Practical - Practical Meter

Here's a very cool gadget that I backed via Kickstarter, and have added to my mobile power ensemble. I've previously covered power generating thermo-electric systems such as Tellurex tPod1
and the bioLite power generating campstove as well as some options for going solar.

I've also covered a couple of power units, such as the Snow Lizard SLXtreme-5 iPhone case and the Power Travellers Power Gorilla.


This is the Practical Meter which is a clever little in-line USB unit, which gives you a visual means of determining the power usage and output. The LED's built in give an indication of the number of Watts (0-10W, 0-2A) that is being drawn to a given device. This display is in two stages, blue LED's lighting up for 1-5W, and then with the flashing red LED indicating 6-10W.

This level of resolution enables the user to customise the output, either by adjusting cables for better USB version, or the power source. For example, with solar collectors, it would be possible to adjust the angle of the panel to catch the maximum solar output. The same would stand for a thermo-electric generator, or any USB source combination.


Having an adjustable and monitoriable source of power means that a survivor can tailor their resources to best serve their needs in the event of being cut off from reliable mains power. Whether it is solar, fire or from a variety of battery sources, with an item like the Practical Meter, you can at least see what you are getting. It's not a robust piece of tech, so needs to be treated with more care than a ruggedised piece of bug-out kit, but at 12g (0.4oz) it's a great value piece of tech to add to your "power-pack pack".