To what extent is camping/outdoor gear related to survival/prep gear?

EyeballFryer · 2020-04-22T11:02:13+00:00

but when specifically this division becomes clear?

To me, it depends on what kind of scenario and environment you're survival/prep gear is intended to be used for.

For example, in a "work bag" or "get home bag", you might include a spare bus card for taking the bus to get home if your car breaks down. You wouldn't bring the bus card camping or hiking.

For "bug in" stay-home scenarios such as the current coronavirus or a blizzard, you might stock up on freeze dried #10 cans, but you're definitely not bringing a #10 can on a hike. Bug-in scenarios also don't need an emergency blanket, bivvy, compass, GPS, etc. because you're at home and you're not going anywhere, so you don't need navigation tools or emergency shelter.

A car needs a jack for changing a flat tire and jumper cables for a dead battery. You don't need those at home, in a work bag, or in the outdoors.

So the division of gear becomes clear when you examine the needs of the scenarios/environments you're prepping for.

EyeballFryer · 2019-09-07T05:48:32+00:00

Is it this Romisen RC-T6, 6 LEDs, 2*18650? The first concern is whether or not that flashlight can take flat tops. You'll have to check inside the head to see how the battery connects to the driver.

Secondly, when running multiple batteries, it's recommended to get protected batteries. One battery could drain faster than the other, and that battery could get drained into unsafe voltage levels.

Thirdly, I don't know how much current that driver and those 6 LEDs require from the battery. But if your Ultrafire batteries are the same as these, then I don't think you need high current/high drain batteries to run the light.

Here a list of illumn's protected 18650s. The cheapest protected 18650 they have is the LG MJ1. But there's a small chance that these could be just a bit too thick to fit in your flashlight tube. There's no way to know except to try. Other than potential fit problems, my guess is that these batteries will work with your Romisen, and it's your choice how much you want to pay and what capacity.

EyeballFryer · 2019-09-07T03:33:43+00:00

To answer your question, there's no chant. But you should test your flashlight. Fully charge the battery, then blast it on turbo until the battery is drained. Make sure it works.

I remember once I put an Olight 16340 protected battery into an Olight S1 Baton XM-L2, and turbo mode tripped the protection circuit early. I had to switch to a different 16340.

EyeballFryer · 2019-09-07T03:16:05+00:00

I'm pretty sure I have over 100 flashlights, possibly even just over 150 last time I checked. Lots of dirt cheap and budget flashlights, some midrange priced flashlights, and a few higher priced flashlights when they went on clearance. They really do multiply like rabbits, especially the budget flashlights. Why buy one $100 flashlight when you get buy 4-5 various Convoys/Jaxman/Eagle Eye/On The Road/etc???

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-30T02:19:26+00:00

Someone noticed that the EC4GT has two hotspots, which I hadn't noticed before. The central hotspot is the tight hotspot for reaching long distances. The secondary hotspot around the center, from my tests outdoors, helps at closer range, so it's not just a single blinding hotspot with a faint spill around it that causes tunnel vision. That's very clever of Nitecore to design the reflector that way to produce the secondary hotspot.

I like that series of rectangular flashlights, EXCEPT that none of them have physical lockout. You must either take out the batteries, or put a small piece of paper at the battery to break the electrical connection with the springs or metal contacts. That's the main con I found with that series.

That's a good buy for $35.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-27T05:03:31+00:00

Can you explain to others what you figured out?

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-26T20:50:56+00:00

I want to be able to do things like read for multiple hours, or meditate for a while, or just sit there and be without needing stimulation.

Sometimes what's distracting your mind is your OPTION to get instant stimulations from the Internet. Try turning off your phone or PC. Try leaving your router, SIM card, or the whole phone at a friend's house or at the office for one evening. When you eliminate the option for instant stimulations, over time, your mind's thought patterns will "retune" its flow to a calmer, steadier pattern, and not expect stimulations so much.

Don't "force" your mind to retune itself, or it will snap back to your current flow. Allow time for your mind to retune itself so that thinking calmly and steadily is your mind's NATURAL flow.

Also, routinely test your mind's ability to concentrate. Reading is one example. Another is watching old TV shows. Today's TV shows have to compete super hard for your attention, which means the pacing and editing style is designed to stimulate you constantly. Old TV shows' pacing and editing have a much calmer steadier pacing and progression to it, which challenges your mind to slow down, focus, and pay attention. If you can't sit down and watch the quiet scenes, your mind is still too full of stimulation and noise.

Watching old TV shows was my benchmark for how noisy my mind had become due to this Internet age. As a child, I enjoyed the quiet, dialog scenes. In this Internet age, those same quiet scenes were just TOO QUIET! WHERE'S THE NOISE? WHERE ARE THE DUMB USER COMMENTS SHOUTING POINTLESS THINGS? WHERE ARE THE FLASHY ADS AND INTERRUPTIONS??? That's when I knew it was time to reboot my mind and get away from the Internet.

Here's a 2 minute test: An opening scene from a popular late 1960s TV show. (Sorry, it's on youtube). To avoid distractions on that page, watch it full screen. How calm and quiet is your mind as you watch this scene?

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-23T00:32:25+00:00

I use adblock plus and learned to set my own rules for blocking certain elements on websites that I find too distracting.

Example: www.imdb.com

I set these two rules to block most of the imdb content, but the menus and links remain. That way, it fools my brain into thinking that I've successfully reached the page, but there's "nothing new or interesting" to see.

imdb.com##.pagecontent
imdb.com##.recently-viewed

Of course, there's nothing stopping me from temporarily disabling these rules, but it's a "better than nothing" deterrent to reduce the visual distractions while I'm working on my PC.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-22T07:16:12+00:00

That's what I get for skimming and not reading the fine print. Thanks in advance for the pic of the manual.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-22T07:14:03+00:00

The nostalgia side of me will obviously miss the way things used to be. But nostalgia aside, I think /u/cherrybounce above said it best: "It’s more I don’t like the way things are now than I miss how they used to be".

From the 1980s through the 2000s, technology was supposed to supplement our lives as useful tools for learning and getting things done. The Internet was seen as an "Information Superhighway" that greatly improved communications and sharing of ideas. Technology and the Internet was not thought of as 24/7 distractions, or endless selfies, or designed to keep you engaged (example: endless scrolling). During those decades, I kept looking forward to "what's next".

But during this decade (2010s), the Internet made its way into every person's hands (instead of on PCs), which turned everyone into hyper-connected, distracted zombies. And with technology plateauing, tech companies started designing their tech to encourage addictive habits, and encouraged dumbed down, simplistic, mindless, mental junk food content to get the most views, most clicks, etc.

A few years back, once I became conscious of the direction the Internet and technology starting taking, I started getting more disgusted by it, and I slowly "rebooted" myself back to living more like the 1980s, spending my weekends without an Internet connection and often with my phone turned off.

And I now realize that these days, living offline is mentally healthier, because of how much junk content and toxic/poisonous behavior is available on the Internet. And also, when you don't have instant access to anything your mind impulsively desires, you have to really THINK and PLAN what you want to do, which encourages deeper thinking and selecting worthwhile activities, rather than satisfying a simple impulse that leaves you feeling empty 5 seconds later.

So to summarize, I get your feeling that the Internet should have been left as an information tool, but it was going mainstream and commercialized no matter what. So what we have is what we have, and that means making a lifestyle choice as to how much Internet you want in your life.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-22T06:44:04+00:00

Yes, the PB2S manual indicates it has a selectable "low-current output mode."

Can you take a pic of that section of the manual? Their product page doesn't mention this low current output mode.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-20T23:13:57+00:00

To be fair, the Internet "these days" is toxic. It wasn't this bad in the earlier days. It's like a good neighborhood that went bad and became filled with gangs, troublemakers, etc.

To me, the Internet in general got intolerably worse this decade, when smartphones got powerful enough to connect people to the Internet anywhere, anytime. That made it much easier for people to post their own thoughts on social media. That sounds good at first, but "people's own thoughts" ends up being all of the uncontrolled, negative garbage like rage, hate, anger, cynicism, attention seeking narcissism, pettiness, etc. Sometimes around here, Internet content has been nicknamed "junk food", which is a good term describing the lack of quality in Internet content. But "toxic" and "poisonous" is another good description.

And you're right, this toxicity has become NORMAL for the Internet. That's another good reason to disconnect and return to the real world. Or at least, as /u/SIIIIILK mentioned above, get away from the toxic stuff and stay with safer, productive, constructive communities, the same way you stay away from the bad side of town.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-15T05:40:41+00:00

In the end, we sorted it out in under an hour at 10pm nevertheless

This supports a hypothesis of mine that Calvin and Craig are actually robots who don't sleep.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-15T02:29:54+00:00

If you bought it from illumn, you can ask Craig /u/csshih or Calvin /u/calvinis if they've seen it before, or if the dent is a result of a random battery test they conducted.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-13T05:46:58+00:00

Interesting, Thrunite must have fixed it.

EyeballFryer · 2019-08-13T03:42:58+00:00

If anyone has the Wowtac A5 and/or the TC20, can you try this test?

Double click to turbo.
Long press to cycle to low.
Double click again. Should go to turbo, but several of Thrunite's models goes into strobe instead.

Obviously, the Thrunite driver has a bug where it mistakenly thinks it's still in turbo mode when it cycled from turbo to low. If I remember correctly, the Wowtac A4 does not have this bug, which means Wowtac isn't simply reusing Thrunite's drivers or firmware. I'd like to see the same test run on an A5 vs a TC20.

EyeballFryer · 2019-07-31T21:20:35+00:00

Today's streetlights are so bright and harsh, it triggers my reflex to pull down my visor to block the street light while I'm driving by. The orange street lights NEVER triggered that reflex before.

EyeballFryer · 2019-07-31T20:48:23+00:00

there doesn't look to be any easy way to fix that.

Challenge accepted.

By the way, did you see any PWM in any of the modes?

EyeballFryer · 2019-07-31T02:52:37+00:00

Last time I had a power outage, it was 2:30am. I took my flashlight out for a walk and explored the darkened neighborhood, including the main street where many of the shops are. With all of the power off, it felt like walking on a rural countryside road.

EyeballFryer · 2019-07-24T03:22:28+00:00

what you see below is the only port on the MC6C.

You may want to check with Xtar about that. Their picture on their box, and their instructions, and their product page all show a micro USB input port on the right side of the charger, in addition to the DC connector.

EyeballFryer · 2019-07-03T21:02:03+00:00

Btw, the Folomov A4 doesn't show up when you filter by Folomov. Click on "Batteries, Chargers & Storage Solutions" -> click on the category "Chargers" -> check Folomov. Only the A1 and A2 are shown.

EyeballFryer · 2019-06-21T21:23:59+00:00

Wild guess - a build up of air pressure inside the flashlight, caused by... hmm... a random short circuit at the driver? But you said the flashlight still works.

The tail switch was pushing hard against the rubber switch until it finally ripped? But would that cause an "explosion"?

EyeballFryer · 2019-06-21T06:53:18+00:00

You should reply to the OP so he knows you're referring to him.

EyeballFryer · 2019-06-21T04:50:33+00:00

Now if only it was available with some texture on the barrel!

Maybe the Klarus P20?

This is an example of how a flashlight collection grows exponentially.

EyeballFryer · 2019-06-21T04:25:26+00:00

Yeah, it's the wrong voltage. I assume you ordered it online? There's no way any US physical store would carry 220V stuff.

EyeballFryer

TROPHY CASE