I’ve had a couple emails concerning the Devastator Surefire Flashlight I mentioned last week in “In the Wee Small Hours” or “Daddy, its a drunk under the Sloper!”
Yes it is the M4 Devastator that developes enough light to stun & disorientate.
Surefire rates this flashlight at 225 lumens stock, 350 lumens with the hi-power bulb unit.
This is roughly eleven times the output of a big D-Cell flashlight.
Often you will see “Candlepower” as a rating – not a very useful unit for technical reasons – but roughly the M4 Devastator is 50,000 plus Candlepower in base configuration.
There is a nice series of night time photos at Lights for Hunting on the Hunting Chat Forum showing the actual beam from flashlights of various lumens.
The Lithum 123A batteries (the M4 uses four) are similar to the camera batteries used in many cameras with flash units.
This basically “portable search light” is teamed with a Surefire Z2 CombatLight with lanyard in my “Go Kit.” Several spare bulb units, spare 123A batteries, a handful of light sticks, and an inexpensive LED flashlight w/spares complete the lighting setup for the kit.
The light part of the kit is designed to offer everything from minimal light – the LED light on one LED is a pipsqueak – to allow a quick look at maps or settings without completely trashing night vision, to a pocket sized serious flashlight in the Z2, to the very serious light power of the M4.
The M4 is about equal to a single landing light from a light aircraft, so it is very useful for much more than the “stun factor” Surefire promotes. On the down side it is expensive (List is $330.00) and hold $15.00 worth of batteries.
The Z2 is easy to tuck in the pocket, yet is enough light to do detail work under – potentially first aid – and shares batteries with the M4. Though less costly, by the time you add the lanyard, holster and batteries it is a $140.00 investment.
The LED flashlight (I actually have several banded in different names, of various grades) can run a very long time on the one or three LED settings, often can be set to flash to attact attention or be left static as a marker, and are inexpensive enough to be “give aways” if the situation warrants. They also use common battery sizes. With batteries these are seldom above $30.00 and sometimes are found in the sub-$10 price range.
73
Steve
K9ZW