Paul Gomez
www.Gomez-Training.com
It's funny how short the institutional memory is when it comes to guns, gear and training. When SureFire was the only game in town, they did a pretty good job of lining out desirable characteristics for a tactical light and then built lights that met those characteristics. During a recent SureFire Institute instructor development class, I noticed that they had changed the wording in their powerpoint to more nebulous verbiage as if to excuse the fact that the majority of their current lights fail to meet their earlier standards.
In the early days, the Big Three attributes were:
1. High output, high quality prefocused beam
2. Reliable High Energy power source
3. Separate & distinct momentary and permanent on switching
I believe that they were correct in this original assessment, however, nowadays, finding a tac light [regardless of manufacture] that offers truly distinct momentary and constant switching is becoming quite a chore.
Attributes that I consider very nice to have in an EDC light are
Pocket clip -- I'd rather clip a light to a pocket rather than give up belt space for another pouch.
Facility to mount lanyard [whether you choose to mount a retention device or not, it shouldn't require you to have to buy an extra piece of gear from the flashlight company simply to attach it to the light! Nothing is more annoying than spending $50 + on a light and then having to pay $5 for a friggin lanyard ring and $5 shipping...]
Size efficiency -- There are a plethora of young, aggressive companies that are really looking at the compact, single DL123, LED lights for EDC. Lately, I've been running a NovaTac 120T [120 lumens, 45minutes run time, dead man switch, plus permanent on capability with 3 different output settings and a strobe function]
Whether you like a 550 cord lanyard like SureFire most often provides, a large keyring or O-ring to flip the light onto the back of the hand or a piece of shockcord [my preference], I don't really care, but if you are going to put it on your light, you need to train with it. That means both low light livefire training, gunhandling and manipulations and low light force-on-force work.
Here's a general rule that I first learned from my friend, James Yeager. I haven't seen anyone else use this, but it does jibe with my experience, so I've been passing this on.
As a rule of thumb, you need 1 Lumen per meter to see and 3 lumens per meter to fight. What is meant by this is that with 1 Lumen per meter, you can see shapes but with 3 lumens per meter, you can actually see detail well enough to identify threats. This is an important distinction and, if you use this metric, you see that a 60 lumen light is, effectively, a 20 meter light source for fighting. 60 lumens was the bottom level recommended by SureFire for a tactical light. It was the output of the old E2. The base output on the classic 6P was 65 lumens.
In the early days, the Big Three attributes were:
1. High output, high quality prefocused beam
2. Reliable High Energy power source
3. Separate & distinct momentary and permanent on switching
I believe that they were correct in this original assessment, however, nowadays, finding a tac light [regardless of manufacture] that offers truly distinct momentary and constant switching is becoming quite a chore.
Attributes that I consider very nice to have in an EDC light are
Pocket clip -- I'd rather clip a light to a pocket rather than give up belt space for another pouch.
Facility to mount lanyard [whether you choose to mount a retention device or not, it shouldn't require you to have to buy an extra piece of gear from the flashlight company simply to attach it to the light! Nothing is more annoying than spending $50 + on a light and then having to pay $5 for a friggin lanyard ring and $5 shipping...]
Size efficiency -- There are a plethora of young, aggressive companies that are really looking at the compact, single DL123, LED lights for EDC. Lately, I've been running a NovaTac 120T [120 lumens, 45minutes run time, dead man switch, plus permanent on capability with 3 different output settings and a strobe function]
Whether you like a 550 cord lanyard like SureFire most often provides, a large keyring or O-ring to flip the light onto the back of the hand or a piece of shockcord [my preference], I don't really care, but if you are going to put it on your light, you need to train with it. That means both low light livefire training, gunhandling and manipulations and low light force-on-force work.
Here's a general rule that I first learned from my friend, James Yeager. I haven't seen anyone else use this, but it does jibe with my experience, so I've been passing this on.
As a rule of thumb, you need 1 Lumen per meter to see and 3 lumens per meter to fight. What is meant by this is that with 1 Lumen per meter, you can see shapes but with 3 lumens per meter, you can actually see detail well enough to identify threats. This is an important distinction and, if you use this metric, you see that a 60 lumen light is, effectively, a 20 meter light source for fighting. 60 lumens was the bottom level recommended by SureFire for a tactical light. It was the output of the old E2. The base output on the classic 6P was 65 lumens.
