Almost forgot, here's the battery pack I rigged up:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...r_J/bttery.jpg


6x18650 for 15Ah total. I've got my bike pre-wired and the pack will sit on my rack or in my panniers with a quick disconnect so it can be removed easily for charging. I've just got to mod the P7s now, but that kind of breaks my heart a little since it will remove their everyday usability to be tethered to a wire :( Oh well, I'll have to just buy another:)

My four MTE P7 lights are on the way :thumb:

Why did I order four? My gf and I were going to start commuting to work together, which is a ~16 mile ride one way. Two per bike would have been great, but her mom convinced her that biking on streets is too dangerous, so now I have four lights to mount on one bike.

I need to figure out what mounts to get, since I just ordered four of the cheapie $1.99 mounts, which may or may not suck. Maybe I'll order some Twofish mounts later.

I wasn't sure what to do about the batteries, so I just ordered some Trustfire batteries from DealExtreme, and some Tenergy 2600mAh batteries from Battery Junction (Tenergy 18650 fully protected). Not sure if either are good, but the prices for both were pretty similar. If I wasn't so obsessive and compulsive, I probably just would have purchased the Trustfire bats as a temporary solution and waited for the AW 18650 batteries to be in stock again (AW batteries at cpfmarketplace.com).

Will these batteries fit in the flashlights? I sure hope so!:)

If you want AW 18650s, 4Sevens has them. I have some Tenergys and they've been fine in high-end Q5 and R2 lights too.

I hope everyone is using protected batteries? :) Especially you, Wiggle, that battery pack could do some scary stuff if anything creates a short circuit across those metal contact plates :eek::injured:

Well I got my new JetBeam III today but not the DX order with all the batteries so I had to swap bats for my beamshots.

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...t/IMG_0061.jpg
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...t/IMG_0063.jpg

No twin beamshots yet, but you can see where the JB3 shines over the P7 in throw with enough spill for close distance objects. I also noticed under the street lights, it washes out almost all of the P7's beam but the JB3 hot spot is still good to shot details of the road. So P7 good for almost pitch black riding and JB is good for both urban and rural riding.

My medium mode, around 60% so around 135-140lumens
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3.../JetIII004.jpg

Max 225 lumens, I set my strobe at the same brightness and a speed good for my eyes without going into a trance.
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3.../JetIII005.jpg

The P7 on high on the same mounting angle.
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3.../JetIII009.jpg

Protected cells should work just fine for the P7 you ordered, they are slightly bigger than the unprotected cells.. I found the trustfire cells to work fine, a little better runtime than the similar ultrafire cells..

The twofish mounts are just easy to use and give you good stability.. I have even used them with a 2C Maglite sized light with no problems.. As seen from the beamshots above it is easy to see why the P7's are ideal for bike riding.. Sure, some Q5's have better throw but when you ride a bike you need more sidespill over a light than can throw 100 yards..

I'm a 4th year EE student, give me more credit than that:) Yes those are all protected batteries and the whole thing is going to be wrapped in insulation so there will be minimal short circuit risk:thumb: Also it's only being charged with me beside it so if anything happens I'll be there.

My second P7 came in and the roads are dry tonight so I'll get some on-road shots. I'm jealous of iamstuff getting 4 P7s, haha thats over the top.

I have to disagree with that, having used both flooders and throwers :) For road riding, excessive flood right in front of the bike, with dim light in the distance, is not my ideal, at any rate. ;) My eyes adapt to the bright area right in front of me, and then I can't see the dimly-illuminated stuff 4-6 seconds out. Like driving a car at high speed with just the fog lights?

I guess I should just be glad that people are getting serious lights of any sort, instead of throwing $50 away on silly plastic bike lights like Cateye et al :D Anyway, a mix of the two, like jsigone is setting up, is one way to get the best of both worlds. What my mix looks like:

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/f...chBgon/035.jpg

BTW nice JetBeam, jsigone :)

Ok, just making sure :) Anyone who is using unprotected cells, especially in a high-drain light, get some protected ones.

4 P7's is really over the top, none of them are going throw any farther unless you got 4 completely different brands of P7's.....a $200 setup can be spent more evenly to optimize the beams for riding. Changing 4 batteries every hour would get old pretty darn fast.....and having to carry enough spares for a 3hr ride would suck.

mechBgon, what thrower are you using?

Agreed. When I read that, my first thought was "great, all the problems of excess foreground flood, multiplied by four." Well, she'll definitely be visible to motorists, anyway! :)

Dereelight DBS V2, with the 1S R2 pill at 1.2 amps on 18650. I prefer it with the OP reflector. Even with OP, the DBS still dominates even my Seca 700 by a factor of about 2 to 1 for effective range, on-road or off. I can handle it as a helmet light, but I think it's heavier than most people would prefer in that role. I also have an Olight M20 Warrior R2 similar in size to your JetBeam, if I want something with lower weight for a helmet light.

Are you running the smooth or textured reflector on your JetBeam?

2x P7 will cover a lot of ground. one on medium or low pointed short and one on high pointed far will be more than enough.

I read all these threads on lighting and my eyes glaze over and my head starts to spin and I feel dizzy.
Protected, unprotected;AW; 2200mAh;2400mAh;

Mebbe that is why we waste our money on more expensive lights.

I am not a EE4th year (wish I were) and thus none of the abbreviations make any sense to me........

I did get the protected and unprotected-not sure what makes it protected but I guess it won't start fires.

Also, the flashlight needs some protection (sounds like condoms are in order :-))

Hopefully I purchased the correct items.

I purchased only one P7 (regulated I believe) and then hopefully got two protected batteries, a cheapo flashlight holder and a charger-what do I need for this........

Any tutorials out there for the EE challenged?

I got the OP reflector, the primary used the the JB3 is for a helmet mount on the MTB ride. I didn't want to see the cree rings to gain the 4-5% increase in throw when the JB3 already has good throw.

The JB3 I got was the normal "Pro" at 115grams (about 50grams lighter then my MTE P7), they have the new ST (slim tube) which is a whopping 65 grams and 1/4" shorter. If I got that one, I'd get it with the smooth reflector because on paper the throw wasn't as good as the basic "Pro" so it would need that extra margin factor. I may end up getting that one too :twitchy:

The user interface is pretty simple and easy to setup. My ride lasty night was only to get beamshots, I havn't done a speed test yet and can't ride my MTB because I crashed it on Tuesday and the derailler hanger snapped:eek: nice hike a bike back to the cars. I hope to get some beamshots on the trails next week or so when my hanger comes in the mail.

Join the club. :)

I'm just along for the ride trying to take advantage of all these smart guys.

My second P7 came in, sorry no beamshots yet. I gotta say, one P7 aimed real close and one aimed midrange and my L2D on the helmet is just beautiful. I"m gonna be using my bike alot more at night now:) I got one of my lights modded for use with my battery pack and it works great, tomorrow I'll mod the other one and get the whole rig done and ready to go. A run test of both lights on high off the battery pack will be fun too. I'm hoping for around 2.5-3 hours.

I'm probably not going to use all four on a single bike, but at least I'll have some to experiment with. Even with just two, I wouldn't need to run both on high, so the batteries should last longer than an hour. I only ordered four because I intended to use them for two different bikes.

sorry I thought all four were going on the same bike, that would be lil over kill LOL and to both the road and one coming cars.

My P7 finally came today! I have the Trustfire Rapid Charger. According to their site here:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1251

At the very bottom it says charging time for an 18650 is 2-4 hours. Is this true? I've been told 8-10 hours? Correct me if I am wrong :)

It's rated for 400mA charging rate so I'd estimate actual charge time to be about 6 hours from completely drained for a 2500mAh battery.

Hmmm. It states on the back of the charger packaging (18650: 2-4 hours). But I've seen people say everything from 2 to 10 lol.... I guess it doesn't matter since the lights will go green when finished anyway..

My guess is exactly between 2 and 10, therefore the best possible answer:)

We were both wrong!! lol. I put it in the charger at approximately 9:15. By 10:45 the red LED's changed to green LED's. And WOW this sucker is blindingly bright. I love it! I need to order a few more.

Good stuff, I think the batteries come partially charged though:)

Agreed :-D

I also just noticed that this light has an "SOS" mode too. I wasn't aware of that before ordering. It's medium, low, high, rapid blind, SOS blink. Kinda cool idea. (I now see where it says that on the site lol)

i just placed my order recently. i couldnt decide between the SSC P7 or the Cree MCE so i bought both! P7 for flood and MCE for less flood, and helmet mounted Q5 for spot. now to make sure i dont blind people on the trail and the street...