More light shed on Hobbit Hole flashlights

July 11th, 2006

The Hobbit Hole’s offering of the SureFire and Pelican high-intensity flashlights has generated more interest in a shorter period of time than almost anything else we’ve offered. I now have more information on these lights, and I hope troops asking for these items read this message, too.

First, it’s risky to try to adapt the SureFire xenon flashlight to a weapons light. As I explain in more detail in the revised article, a real weapons light has more than just a one-inch body diameter. It’s especially designed to manage the heat these lamps generate, and survive the recoil and vibrations from firing the weapon. They’re also far more expensive, on the order of 3 or 4 times more expensive. The SureFire G22 might function flawlessly as a weapons light for your entire tour, or the lamp might fail with the first shot. It’s a risk I’d rather not take.

Second, those wonderful Pelican 3330 LED lights turned out to be too good to be true. The vendor mistakenly sent us the 3330, which costs $15 more, in place of the 3320, which is a xenon model. We just got lucky, and received a bunch of $35 LED lights for $19. That oversight was corrected in the last shipment we just received.

Finally, we’re now discovering that ordering 30 or 40 flashlights at a time is a bit of a challenge for our dealers. To avoid delays, we may substitute some other color flashlight in place of desert tan. Your flashlight may be OD green, or black. We promise not to mail out any flashlights in “high-visibility yellow”.

As it now stands, we have the $36 SureFire xenon, the $35 Pelican LED, and the $19 Pelican xenon lights. The SureFire comes with three sets of batteries, the Pelicans with just one.

Much of what we buy and ship depends on where the deals are, and how fast we can get how many. If we send you a Pelican xenon light in place of the SureFire xenon, we’ll throw in extra batteries. If you want the longer lamp and battery life of the LED, we’ll send you the Pelican 3330 LED. Even at $35, the Pelican LED remains a steal, because a SureFire G22 with a LED lamp assembly costs $20 more than the xenon model.

Please keep this in mind when you request a high-intensity flashlight. Thank you.

Entry Filed under: General, Troop Tech