Fenix PD30

This Review is dedicated to the small and handy Fenix PD30 torch.  I purchased this from a gun show in April for $70 exactly with a free assessory kit.  The package included the flashlight itself, spare o-rings, a replacement cover for the tail-cap button, a belt pouch, and a wrist strap.  Since it's purchase this has been part of my every day carry.  I'm going to give an overview of the controls, followed by descriptions of each mode of operation, and finish up with my brief review and humble opinions.

I'd like to begin with an the operation of the flashlight.  The included instructions are sadly a bit murky and it took some experimentation to unlock all the secrets.  Essentially you have two main modes of operation, standard and "turbo."  To enter turbo mode you simply make sure that the lens end of the torch is screwed all the way on.  to enter standard mode you lossen it by a quarter turn.  Each of these modes has 2 or more sub modes.  To cycle the sub modes you first click the button to turn the light on,  then you depress and release the button,  but you don't depress the button so far that it clicks.  For normal mode you have 4 submodes: low, medium, high, and SOS flasher.  Turbo mode includes turbo and turbo strobe.  Your final control option is giving the tail cap a quarter turn to loosen it.  This turns the torch off and effectivly locks out the button.

The first 3 normal modes will make up the bulk of your day to day use.  Low power is pretty dim, 9 lumens, but it will maximize your run time.  I find low power makes a great task light as well as a good general purpose light once I've addapted to operating in the dark.  Medium puts out 70 lumens,  this is great for navigating the house in the dark, heading down to the basement, etc.  Medium is about the output of a low end pocket flashlight like you'd find at wal-mart.  High output is 117 Lumens.  High is my go to setting for looking for small parts I dropped.  It's about the same output as the higher end LED lights you'll find at wal-mart.  good and bright, unfortunatly, your run time drops to 4 hours.  This is considerably lower that the peak of a 65 hour runtime you get on low power.  The final standard mode is the SOS flasher.  Activating this mode simply sets the torch to flash and SOS signal in high output setting.  Heaven forbid you ever actually have to use this, but honestly,  after the tornado struck nearby Joplin I realized, this probably isn't a bad setting to have.  A steady pulse of SOS could make the difference in being able to attrack the help of a rescue crew and dying under a pile of rubble.  Fenix makes no claim as to the run-time of this mode, and honestly, I've never tested it.

Activating Turbo mode is simply put, like opening the Ark of the Covenant.  Turbo puts out an impressive 220 Lumens.  If that's not enough for you there is the option of purchasing the PD31 which has an awesome 300 lumen output but otherwise is identical to the pd30.  Turbo mode is actually what convinced me to make this purchase.  I'll admit, I picked one of the display models up shined it into my palm and clicked it on.  After looking at a large green and red spot that followed me around for the next few minutes I pulled out some cash and made my purchase.  There are two main drawbacks to the use of turbo mode.  First your runtime is crummy.  Turbo mode will hold you out for about an hour and a half.  Second, Turbo mode heats the flashlight up considerable.  The manual suggests that Turbo mode be used only in limited duration and frankly I have to agree.  Turbo mode is your self-defense mode.  It works on animals and people.  All you see with this shining in your direction is a massive glare and colorful spots.  If your really in trouble and pairing it with your conceal carry, you have strobe mode.  Great setting for CQB.  In this mode the light strobes rapidly at it's full 220 Lumen output.  If you've ever seen the move "Kick Ass" you'll have a pretty good idea of what this mode does.

The Fenix line is made in China.  I wouldn't let that put you off too much though, this isn't a cheap knockoff of a better light.  In the time I've been carrying this torch it has seen daily use.  I use it when I'm working on the car or cleaning gear.  At the laundry mat I use a quick flash on low power to check that I haven't missed any socks in the machine.  It's a small size and convient to hold.  It rides well clipped in my jeans pocket and doesn't stick up anymore than a ballpoint pen does.  The belt pouch includes velcro on the belt loop allowing it to easily be removed from a belt or attached to a MOLLE vest.  The tail cap uses a U shaped design that mostly protects the switch from accidently being pushed but is still comfortable for your thumb.  I've had some problems with the light activating when carried in my pocket.  When placed in my pants pocket and driving my car, the tailcap is perfectly positioned to be activated by the buckle on the seat belt as I lift my foot from the gas to press the brake and viceversa.  This is a small complaint and only happens with certain jeans and not all vehicles I drive.  True a better protected tail cap would prevent this but a quick twist locks the butten out and prevents this just as well.

The Lock out mode is a great feature.  I've been on night ops with individuals with weapon mounted Surefires or cheap UTG weapon lights.  It never fails,  someone will stumble and hit the pressure pad or tail cap and send that beam into the sky looking like the Eye of Sauron searching for the one ring.  It's not uncommon for people to put batteries in backward, leave them out, or even place a small piece of paper in their light to prevent this.  The quick twist of the tail cap is so much easier.  What more is you could set it up so that the light would turn on as soon as you've twisted the tail cap.

The run time has been great.  The orignal batteries are still holding up just fine for me after months of daily use.  With your options of various run modes you can really maximise your battery life.  I was worried that this light would devour pairs of rather expensive CR123A batteries but honestly it's been great.  The flashlight will give you a heads up as it get's low.  The beam will start to waiver before it dies.  I'm not sure how long you have, but it's a good heads up to change your cells.

I don't have much experience with Surefires or other high end tac-lights out there.  I will admit I own a UTG weapon light as well as other cheaper lights.  As such I'm aiming this article at other new mil-simmers or anyone else entering the tac-light market.  I would recommend this torch in a heart beat.  It's going price seems to be about $65.  It's held up well and served me well.

As a final note, Viking tactical makes an offest mount for about $70 that will fit the little pd30 and PD31.  I'm planning to purchase one of these along with a couple of PD31's.  I plan to use the mount and one of the torches for airsoft.  The second I plan to store in the box with my home defense items.

UPDATE:  well my feniz bit the dust last spring.  I was comming home from a camping trip and somewhere in the 14hour car ride it clicked on in my pocket.  by the time I got home it was dead.  I replaced the batteries to no avail.  I'm guessing the full on turbo mode until the battery went dead probably burned something out in the circuitry.  I'm still looking for a replacement if anyone has anything they would like to suggest.

More Updates.

Well I'm officially no longer working 7 days a week at my primary job.  I'll have fridays off so I'm going to stick to a Friday update schedule.  here's a little preview of upcomming articles.

Comm Gear:  I'll be reviewing an MBITR replica along with an Element H250 handset for it.

Internals: I finally have my M4 working properly and will be reviewing the Airsoft Systems ASCU version 2 controller.  It's a cool little microswitch based mosfet.

External:  I've recently mounted a G&P redi-mag on my M4 I'm trying out.  Review to come.

Check back Friday.

Night Vision Mod

This is a pretty simple modification.  I found that the rail grabber on the Classic Army Peq-2 box is a perfect fit.  Three screws hold it on the Peq box.  then you simply cut off the little rail grabber legs on the eyeclops unit and use some 2 part epoxy putty to stick it to the bottom of it.  I used a raser saw and some green stuff from my Warhammer 40k toolbox.  Here's a couple of pics to help.

behold the $30 Night Vision Scope!

Ok, So I was looking into a low end Gen 1 scope for a upcoming night game and I happened across this little gem.  It set me back about $30 shipped from Toys R Us.  I figured to myself, well it's probably going to blow, but for $30 why not?

Here's a quick run down,  I'll go over my background with NODs, some quick pros and cons to this model, my initial mods, impressions and some side by side comparisons with my gen 1 device.

As for my experience, I've used Gen 3 pvs-14's courtesy of One Shepard and their light leader course.  If you have the money to blow, this is with out a doubt the way to go.  Unfortunately the price tag is alot higher than most airsofters are likely to be able to afford.  I know I find myself struggling to afford field fees anymore thanks to the ever rising gas prices.  Gen 1 gear is frankly much more affordable; however, Gen 1 is frankly junk.  The newer stuff is completely passive.  A pvs-14 is fully capable of running off star light alone.  Gen 1 pretty much has to have an ir illuminator.  This means that you're shining a flashlight around that for the most part only people with NODs can see.  This is perfectly acceptable for hunting but not so much for milsim.  You don't want those rich assholes getting the drop on you.

This lead me to really put some thought into my night vision needs.  Night play in airsoft is mostly a series of ambushes and counter ambushes.  I can navigate just fine with my natural eyesight,  but what would really rule would be something for 1) IFF, the identification of friend and foe,  but not only that, squad cohesion.  Nothing sucks more than getting you fire team separated a little bit, then lighting each other up in a blue on blue scenario.  2) something to help with that initial few rounds in an ambush.  I use a madbull blackside flare unit.  once the shit hits the fan I can guide the tracers in.  But I'd like a higher probability of getting a initial hit.  Another quirk to night combat is that your sights are essentially useless.  You can't see iron sights unless you can afford tritium or can at least justify it's expense.  Red dot's are out of the question,  they glare to bad at night to see through.  Scopes are out too, illuminated ones run into the same problem as red dots. With non-illuminated scopes there's simply not enough contrast to see the crosshairs, unless you have $1500 to drop on an ACOG. 

Now on to current toy.  This device works by using a little CMOS sensor like a digital camera.  It uses a series of IR LED's arranged around the lens to provide illumination.  The image is displayed on a little LCD screen in the eye piece.  If you have a night shot digital camera, or have seen a night vision security camera at the gas station, it basically works the exact same as those.  It's a proven technology; it's cheap and effective.  Jakk's Pacific, the maker of this particular toy has actually made a few of these.  They made a splinter cell looking set of goggles, some binoculars, and the goggles for one of the COD games.  This device has three little nobs,  two that you can see on the side and one on the top.  The front knob changes the display between two modes.  The first is a greenish NOD style vision mode, which is kinda cool.  The second is a more traditional black and white image.  In the dark the image shows up black and white, but with enough ambient light, the display will show up in color.  In both modes though, I've noticed the red laser on my crimson trace still shows up red. 

The second knob is the on off switch, nothing fancy.  It's the top nob that's important.  That switches it between a stealthier low output and a longer ranged high output modes. The way this works is this: the unit uses 8 IR LED's for illumination.  They're of either slightly different wavelengths or outputs, but anyway, 4 of them produce no visible light and a lower power IR output, the second set produces a lot of IR, but a little bit of visible red light.  I'd post a pic to illustrate, but since digital cameras are sensitive to IR, you're really just going to have to see it in person.

The unit also has a crappy little plastic rail grabber that only seems to work on Nerf guns and a wrist lanyard.

Local flooding of the Mighty MO has canceled the night games I was planning on using this for and my current 7 day a week work schedule is mucking up my plans to take it to the farm for extensive field testing.  You're gonna have to settle for my lab testing for now.  I'll update as I learn more.

Anyway,  my main issues and concerns with this item were that the rail grabber doesn't work, external visibility and effective range.

I'll tackle the grabber first.  For an initial interim solution i simply slide it onto the rail on my m4.  I had to pull back on the charging handle and work on it that way.  Once it was on I braced it between a small rail cover in the front,  and my backup irons in the rear.  Here I was pleasantly surprised.  I learned the scope amazingly co-witnesses perfectly with my iron sights.  Unfortunately, it's not a 1x deal.  it actually has a slight zoom to it,  I'd say about 1.5x.  This means my front sight is generally out of focus (focus is adjustable)  but I can tell where the top of it is.  Since the scope has no crosshairs,  this really does help.  This isn't a super stable option and the scope will pop off.  Since this initial testing I've made a more permanent mode by adding a steel rail grabber to it.  I'll go into details on that in a brief article next time.

For my concern involving external visibility, it was time to do some comparison testing.  I grabbed my Gen 1 monocle and headed for the basement, and the bathroom, and the closet, and the bedroom.  Actually I tested this throughout the house in a variety of dark and semi dark conditions.  I was again amazingly surprised this time.  First this little item actually picks the IR illuminator of it's own lights, and the illuminator of the Gen 1 up better than the Gen 1 tube does.  That means, with the same IR light source, I can actually see farther with this than I can a Gen 1 scope that costs ten times as much.  Second, the LEDs in this puppy are so recessed, that really the Gen1 can only see them if it's looking at it head on.  This is really what sold me on this item. 

In regards to effective range, the box's claim that the range is 50 feet is only partially true.  With it's own built in illumination, you can see about 50 feet.  However, what really determines the range is the light source available, making the box very conservative.  Vision in the daytime is not a problem.  At night an aftermarket illuminator, or IR flashlight,  or even a Maglight with a homemade filter will add considerably to your range of vision.  What's more, bright lights won't screw up this unit.  With Gen 1 any distant light source will cause horrible lens flaring.  Some strategically placed cheapo flashlights will render your night vision blind.  With this one, it really doesn't matter if the strobe on my tracer is going off or if my teammate lights up his 3000 lumen torch.  Since this scope has no light amplification, exterior lights won't bother it. 

As far as mods that could be used to improve upon this piece, besides the previously mentioned faulty rail grabber, it does have a functional rail on top.  You could mount a little red dot or a illuminator up there.  I've kicked around wiring the on-off to a pressure switch.  I think a single pressure switch could be used to toggle this unit and a flashlight at the same time with some creative wiring.  This piece runs on 4 AAA batteries, so it should be able to share a power source with any 6 volt flashlight. 

Since this sees in IR,  any of the IFF tabs GLOW when viewed through it.  IR strobes are visible, so picking up and adventure light is worth it.  Hell, get some IR glowsticks and hand them out to your fireteam.  Another aspect to its sensitivity to IR is that non-treated camo will glare white.  Military grade gear is generally treated so that it'll match the ambient environment in the near IR spectrum much better.  Chinese gear, Condor, Voodoo,  or most of the stuff you get from any airsoft retailers isn't treated.  So, some people may be easier to spot with this.  It sucks to be them.  Ask me why I wash all my clothes in sport wash some time.

Anyway,  thanks for reading.  I'll try to update as I get more testing done, complete mods, etc.  I think this will be an ongoing project.  Maybe in the future I'll post and article on night games in general.  If anyone else has any experience with anything I've mentioned that they would like to contribute feel free to shoot me an email and I'll add it in a future update.

Welcome to Fat Man Tactical Reviews

I don't always get on the real internet so sometimes it takes me awhile to update,  but here goes.  I'm going to be focusing on tactical reviews with the fluffy operator in mind.  I play airsoft so things will mostly be through that frame of reference though I'll try not to neglect my fluffy LEO friends.  I'm be doing some outside of the box stuff, as well as load bearing gear for us bigger guys.  First up though,  messing with a $30 night vision scope.