MegaRay Searchlight MR250

タイトルまたは説明

MegaRay MR**0

• Dimensions: 5"x*3", 7.6 lbs (body), *0 lbs (battery pack)
• Lamp: Xenon Short Arc, **5W, ***0 hr
• Run Time: *5/*5 min
• Battery: SLA, *4V, *0Ah

• The MR uses four 6V, *0Ah SLA batteries in series to give you a *4V, *0Ah source. Which gives the pack it's heft (Fig. 1). The reason why they chose to use a *4V source, even though the ballast can be operated at 9 ~*2VDC, is because of the current requirement. At *2V, the unit requires *6A of current! That's quite a load, especially if the battery must last a long time. At *4V, however, the unit only needs 8A, which is much more reasonable. The SLAs are archaic, but they are great in current capacity. Better batteries in the future will almost be a certainty.

  The unit comes with a custom *4V charger so you can charge it from your home, and the unit can also be powered straight from your vehicle, but because of the current requirements mentioned above (*6A at *2V), you can't power this light from your *2V socket. It comes with direct battery connections instead (Fig. 2). Any high-amperage device does this, like high-wattage inverters, and it is good because it won't blow any of your fuses inside the vehicle. And unlike the MB or NH which needed the engine running because of voltage requirements (both needed about *3V to start), the MR will run fine even without the engine running. For instance, most mid size cars have a battery capacity of about *0Ah, so theoretically you have 5 hours until your battery dies. Even smaller cars have at least *5Ah, so you can power it for a good long while without having to start your engine. Of course, depending on the capacity of your car battery, you might want to run the engine before you drain your battery too much. That way you can get virtually unlimited run time, that is, until you run out of fuel.

• OPERATION

  The light is simple to use. Pull the trigger, and you've got light. Just like other true xenon-short arc lights, there is no ballast sound. Just instant, silent, white light.

  The focusing mechanism is as mentioned above. With the lens element pulled back (Fig. 3), you get flood mode. Pull it out (Fig. 4), and you get spot mode. This true refocusing lens gives the MR better spot-to-flood performance than all the other lights, as the light pattern does not change. It simply gets bigger and smaller. Check out the beam pattern test.

  However, the actual operation of pulling the head in or out is not as smooth as other lights. This is because the other lights use some type of cam-mechanism to move their heads. All you need to do is to twist the head to make it move foward or backward. But in the MR, there is no such design, and you actually have to pull out or push in the head. Sometimes this is difficult to do, and the movement is not very precise. Coming back to the zoom lens analogy, think of how the zoom lens operates. With a simple turn of the wrist you can get the lens to move in or out. Not only precise, but also very easy. Can you imagine trying to actually pull out or push in the lens itself (I remember some of the early zoom lenses did this)? Perhaps a bit of lubrication would help now, but some sort of cam-mechanism that would control the head with a simple twist should be the way to go.

  There is a toggle switch beneath the trigger (you can see it in the photos *- it's the small thing in front of my right hand pinky), which enables you to switch between three modes *- high, low and strobe. High and low modes are self explanatory. In strobe mode, basically the light blinks. To be a bit more precise, it strobes at 8Hz. Or blinks 8 times per second. Night Vision Optics claims that the MR is the only light that strobes at true 8Hz, and that all other lights that have a strobe function actually blink at a slightly different frequency. What's so special about that, you ask? Apparently, blinking light at 8Hz is disorienting to a human brain. So when used at a human target, it can potentially be used as a non lethal weapon.