Yesterday was the annual Írott-kő 35 (Written-Stone - 22 miles) performance tour held in west Hungary. This year, I went with the third prototype of Remlide 250SW hanging on my backpack. I would like to share my personal experiences with the lamp. The Írott-kő is located near Kőszeg and is the highest point of the Transdanubia, with its height of 882 meters. The peak lies directly on the Austro-Hungarian border, the landmark stands in the belvedere building.
We choose 22 miles as our distance, with a total elevation of 3600 feet. I used the first prototype of the carrying case, which I attached to my backpack with a carabiner at the beginning of the day. Thus, it was ensured that the lamp could be powered up by daylight during the tour. The lamp weight is currently about 500 g, which I would definitely like to reduce. My goal is to have the mass of the final version somewhere around 350 g. From the test point of view, it was an advantageous circumstance that we have followed the wrong path several times, so we completed the tour only after dusk. This way, I had the opportunity to test the lamp in a dark-forest environment. Although it was full moon, due to the unclear sky and the foliage we were in a rather dark place. I was pleased to see that one third of the lamp's full brightness was enough to make our immediate surroundings secure visible. Of course, I've always shifted to full brightness to illuminate distant things. The currently used 10° optic has proven to be quite universal for present use. The resin is unfortunately slightly overhanging the optic and because of the refraction some light goes from there directly into our eyes, which is a disturbing phenomenon. This must be clearly changed. The tour has also showed that a function which memorizes the last used level of brightness will be required. With that the lamp will start at the same brightness for the next time it is switched on. We had a simple 4 LED Chinese flashlight as a reference. Unfortunately, its brightness value was not known, but I found that our lamp gave the same brightness at 30% as the reference at 100%. With regard to operating time, the current version of the lamp can illuminate for 3 hours at the mentioned 30% luminous intensity. The new control electronics will hopefully increase it to double.
Finally, the lamp tested well well during our tour. Its brightness and running time proved to be sufficient under the actual circumstances. However, its mass and size will be reduced and the new control electronics will increase its usability significantly.
