Im in the midst of completely reorganzing my basement stash of food, supplies, and other gear. It’s forcing giving me the opportunity to go through a lot of gear that I’ve collected over the thirty years I’ve lived in this house. One of the things I came across was a box of GI anglehead flashlights.
These things are old school with their incandescent light bulbs. They have nice enough features….belt clips, colored filters, lanyard loop, momentary on-off switch for signalling purposes, etc. But that bulb leaves a lot to be desired in a world of LED brightness and efficiency.
Out of curiosity, I decided to order a couple LED replacement bulbs.
I want to say, right off the bat, that this was not an efficient and economical way to go. The replacement bulbs, on Amazon, are about $17. For $17 you can buy a fairly decent flashlight that’s already LED native. However, I was still intellectually curious about the difference in performance that the LED bulb would offer the GI anglehead over the regular bulb.
Res ipsa loquitur:
Clearly, the LED has an advantage over the OEM incandescent bulb. And while this is simply an interesting anecdote regarding the tactics of upgrading these flashlights, it has a lesson about the strategy of upgrading these flashlights. The lesson here is that sometimes the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Legacy gear can sometimes be brought up to modern standards, but sometimes it is more effort and expense to do so. At that point it’s time to throw up your hands and realize it’s time to clean house and start over.
Let me give you an example of this. I had a friend, now deceased, whom I have mentioned before. He thought that he needed a .30 caliber semi-auto rifle to prepare for the upcoming apocalypse. He wound up, in one incarnation, buying a Remington 7400, finding some sort of military-ish stock, locating aftermarket ten-round magazines of questionable reliability, and going through all sorts of financial contortions to basically re-invent the M1A. If he had just bought a Springfield Armory M1A he would have saved himself a ton of time, money, and reliability issues. But he had the 7400 and thought it could be made ‘just as good as’ a military-style semi-auto .308.
Sometimes it just isnt worth updating or ‘upgrading’ a legacy item when the technology and manufacturing have advanced. Here’s another example – I have a few incandescent MagLites that I purchased twenty years ago. They have an on/of switch, a krypton bulb, and run times of a couple hours on a pair of D-batts. In my pocket, right now, I have a Streamlight that has an on/off/low/high/strobe switch, an unbreakable LED bulb, and will put out as much light as the old MagLite…and it’s a fraction of the size. Inflation adjusted, its about the same price. (And, yes, you can buy LED upgrades for MagLites but they don’t work as well as a native LED MagLite. Reflector geometry and all that.) So, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense to upgrade or update these 20-year-old lights. No reason to toss them, though. They can serve in a tertiary role around the house or something.
As I continue with my reorganization project, I am finding a few items here and there that are old enough that it just doesn’t make sense to upgrade them to modern standards. Some things are worth it, yes, but you really need to look at each item with an objective view as to whether its worth upgrading or replacing.
So…there’s some data on flashlights for ya.
One plus on an large upgraded MagLite, it can be carried in a lot of non-permissive environments and makes a much better defensive weapon than a pocket mini. I’ve carried a three D-cell MagLite through airports for decades. The LED upgrade just made it better.
My Brother and I used those G.I. issued flashlights for quite a few years when deer hunting. They are a bit bulky, but put out enough light for walking to the blinds and setting up when getting ready for the hunt. They were stuck in one of the chest pockets of our M65 hunting jackets – that was a handy feature. The small metal loop on bottom end was used often, and the spare bulb was definitely comforting if the bulb were broken suddenly.
Definitely not a distance search light at all but inside 15 feet, definitely adequate light. The red and blue filters are handy features, but some flashlights already offer that without having to install each filter. Battery life was good but then again, they were only lit up about 20 minutes at a time.
I was re-reading Alas Babylon this week, and was struck by how dated this classic is. No LED’s, no solar panels, no computers, no AR’s. Kind of like Heinlein’s sci-fi novels where the protagonist needs to compute a course for his spaceship and pulls out his slide rule (mine is in my top dresser drawer – still works great).
Having recently moved to a small acreage in an undisclosed rural location (more cows and chickens in our neighborhood than people), I’ve been going through some of my older totes that I haven’t looked at in decades.
I have a lot of junk. It still works, sort of. But, realistically, it’s junk.
Heh. I have one of my slide rules on my mantle.
And I still fly with an E6B. And a flight calculator. Guess which I use more often?
I took a physics course at a local community college a few years ago, just for kicks and giggles, and took my slipstick with me to class. Couldn’t afford an expensive calculator at the time.
The instructor knew what it was. None of the kids did. They thought it was really cool! So that’s how it was done back in the olden days!
The big benefit to LED upgrades in old lights is extending the run time. A 1watt LED with that old GI light is what I did. It is my sit on the shelf and wait for power outages light. Runs forever. I have a pocket rocket for checking the property.
Point of order: brighter (lumens) isn’t always brighter (IQ).
Sometimes a less intense bulb with a red lens is exactly what you want.
You only need to see the next couple of steps, the map in front of your face; you’re not trying to light the road ahead while you’re doing 80MPH.
A brighter light at night just makes it easier for bad people to spot you from farther off.
That’s a bug, not a feature.
Somewhere in my stuff is a Streamlight SL-20. In the day, I thought it was as bright as the sun. Now I carry a Surefire that runs on 2 AA batteries that puts my old Surefire to shame in brightness, though it is lacking in the impact tool category that the Streamlight occasionally filled.
I remember putting xenon bulbs in my angle-heads, and mag lights. Now, LED or nothing – and frankly, I buy the cheapest flashlights I can: The cost-effectiveness calculation says they’re FAR cheaper in the long run. The only exceptions are if there is a special feature (the Streamlight Defender and Aviator; and I have a very good headlamp that is waterproof, shockproof, etc for my rescue helmet, because if I have to do a water rescue, it will last. My go-to headlamps right now are the cheap Rayovacs from Walmart.
And the LED lanterns from Harbor Freight are a hell of a deal when on sale: They seem sufficiently durable (I haven’t broken one yet) and batteries last a good long time.
I have been using these NEBO headlamps for a couple years and have purchased them for my close friends and family. They have the normal headband attachment method as well as a clip that slips over your hat brim. I have used them for over and hour at a time, without any degradation of beam intensity, and they are USB rechargeable. https://nebo.acgbrands.com/en_US/mycro-250-headlamp-2-pack.html
I purchased several Surefire G2 flashlights some years ago, and recently upgraded their bulbs with LED components I bought on Amazon for $7.99 on a special deal. That lamp module is normally priced at about $15, which isn’t that great of a deal, but they do work well.
i have a bunch of the old surefire G2s from years ago, all bulb lights…you can find the led replacement bulbs for them (i want to say there are $60+) but the heat they put out can melt the light…def not worth the upgrade…
https://malkoffdevices.com/collections/surefire-drop-ins-for-6p-g2-c2-etc-6-9-volts
they also have maglite drop ins…
https://malkoffdevices.com/collections/maglite-drop-ins-and-accessories
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/upgrading-surefire-g2-nitrolon.347607/
After an EMP, there is a good chance the LEDs will no longer work, while the filament lamp will. An EMP won’t have any effect on batteries.
The going rate for a mag lite at a garage sale KS $1. One China order later, the krypton bulb goes in the storage spot in the spring, LED markings are painted on the butt, and the whole thing goes into deep freeze for hard use backup. I must have half a dozen by now, approx $3 each. I feel like a flashlight shelter for lost and abandoned flashlights.