Light,light,bat?

I have seen in some post lately including pictures of flashlights, flashlights can be a key to success or a key to your demise.
My questions today center around:
Do you use a flashlight?
Do you train,shooting with your flashlight?
Is your flashlight a bat or a super bright 4" type?
Do you practice with the light in the non dominant hand ,above and away from body? Or CrossFist with light on top of or below the shooting weapon?
Do you use it by having it on at all times or on and off as needed(eye adjustment included).

Or
Do you have it on your weapon,with or without a pressure sensor ( to turn on or off)?

Do you take a few nights and train in your house?
Are your walkways always clear and blindspots known?

What do you use, and why? (If led based light let us know please).

(PS if rechargeable what is the light difference between a full charge and a partial charge?)

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Yes.

I was in the stone age until recently. I still had 2 AA cell incandescent Maglites for around the house, one or two first-generation LEDs which were woefully low lumen but at least had some form of intermittent and click-on the tail cap for a combat two hand wrist cross. I had a non-functioning 2 D cell Maglite that needed to go to the local Ace and see if I could get a conversion LED. Also, I wanted to upgrade the 5 D cell “baton” that was the pride of its day and such a waste of electricity to light conversion equipment today.

About five years ago I discovered the First Light Liberator STT. The STT is a 500-lumen rotating lamp assembly that you use on the outside of your off-hand, so you can still use both hands for anything you might need to do. It provides you with a beacon, strobe, a low power walking light, and a document lamp for reading maps and identification documents without glare. This system runs on 2 x CR-123 Li batteries. It is a highly flexible system that allows you to obtain a two-hand compression grip as if you weren’t holding a lamp at all.

At this point, with Crimson Trace laser grips and tritium night sights on my weapons, I was pretty happy and stopped looking. I could light in close, at an extended distance from my body, around corners, and illuminate my workspace with ease. The only downfall of this design is something I’d thought would be good; The STT has a lock switch to prevent inadvertent battery draining. The trouble is the lock function is an active logic circuit. If I engage it for more than a few hours, the battery drains quick time. If I forget and leave it locked overnight, it is guaranteed to drain the batteries dead.

Two years ago, after starting down the path of a timepiece hobby (an obsession for a while to be honest), I discovered a watch/tactical lamp combination called the Surefire 2211 Luminox edition. Three hundred lumens for an hour, 60 for four, and 15 for up to 13 on a rechargeable lithium battery. The torch hangs on the wrist, the combination is light in weight, points where you want it, is easily activated, and to change intensity. The watch is a quartz movement, moderate water resistance, and has tritium ampules to light the watch face and hands in the dark. So far, I’m not recharging more than once every one or two weeks and usually have not dipped into the reserve warning level, which is presented to you by an orange LED “on activation” lamp. (Shows green when the battery has sufficient charge.)

This year I decided, based on a new offering from a ‘new to me’ Company: “Olight,” that I wanted to try a pistol mounted lamp+green laser combination. Because they were new in the market, the Company was offering excellent sale prices and ‘spiffs’ at given purchase levels.

Since then, I’ve mounted a Baldr Pro on my P226 and have one of their Warrior X Pro ‘tactical’ lamps. Impressive performance, but I haven’t tested the mounted Baldr in live-fire yet.

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I put a TLR6 on my EDC, light and/or dot. Illumination could come in handy- I’m one of those people who’d rather have it & not need it than vice versa.

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Got this light on my primary.

Going to be getting one of these lights

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Note on lights lumens is King,and time,make sure of the lumens consistent output
Duty lights are typically 350- 800 lumens

Tactical lights are often 1,000 lumens or higher, a lot are extremely bright at 10,000 or 20,000

Weapons lights generally are 500-700/800 lumens

Blinding Strobes are typically high1,500 - 2,000 but for very short periods of time.

General lights are usually 350 lumens or less

Not hard and fast rules just generalities,but does it impact your use??

Are you lighting a blindspots or blinding an intruder? Are you shooting and insuring that you have time while they try to acquire a target?

Lumen defined:
is a measure of the total quantity of visible light emitted by a source per unit of time(wikepedia)

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Chapman,Ayoob,Harris,FBI, surefire techniques a why,here is a general (old)link

This is just a few and is different from combat techniques but is a good place to start the thought process of our flashlights ,how and why

Does control switch or button placement impact your carry method?

Check it all out and post an answer

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Not a great pic of the light. 600 lumen crimson trace, mounted on a Glock 30. If i need to draw its included on the gun. Otherwise, i carry a streamlight plus i have my phone. Notball situations require a gun, but i have it and 2 free hands on the weapon, if i need it.

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Just some friendly advice, get a flashlight with high lumen and high candela. Basically, lumen is how bright a light is and candela is how far the light goes. Some companies make a high lumen and low candela light that will not be super beneficial in a poorly lit parking lot.

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As @Dr_Richard and @James point out the high lumen are quite valuable for distant observation/inspection and interfering with or blinding an opponent’s vision. The thing not said clearly and what you need to know is how long the torch/flashlight can continually produce the brightness.

The Olight Warrior X Pro I mentioned generates 2500 lumen for 2 minutes if you start out from a full charge. After this, the intensity drops to 1000 lumen for up to 100 minutes and then drops to 300 lumens for whatever time left - the specification is 23 minutes. This is one of three program operations available on the light and you need to know how to work these via a single button.

Olight has other torches/flashlights which have higher lumen with longer run times but these run into hundreds of dollars. Their top-rated is over 600! As production continues to improve the design, technique, and capacity of production, these prices and ability of the units will improve.

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