The draw is about 20 ma for the pilot light. That equates to about 6 minutes of lost runtime per 24 hours that the light is connected with the pilot light on.

Personally I disconnect it if I'm not riding the next day (over the weekend for instance) and usually as long as I disconnect it, I'll take the battery inside and charge it. I charge every 2 days even though I could certainly go 3 days, possibly 4, because I don't want to have to think about how I'm using the light - when I was trying to stretch it to 4 days I found myself leaving it on medium mode (400 lumens or so) on rough road and sometimes I'd hit holes I didn't see in time. Some of the road I'm riding on is so bad that when I see a hole late, there's nowhere to go - the hole is surrounded by other holes, and to miss them all I should have shoulder checked and moved 5 feet left about 50 feet ago.

Also, yes, IMO a spotty ebay light in conjunction with an Action LED Lights wide angle diffuser lens is about perfect.