I have a Fenix AAA light on my keychain and carry a SureFire E1B usually, but was without the Surefire today. I have a flashlight that rides around in my EDC bag...a single AA light that I picked up from Target a few years back. A Rock River...haven't seen them anywhere else and will assume it's a cheap-o China light. It's been fine, no complaints, and was like $20. Anyways, power goes out, I find the bag and go to click the flashlight on. Nadda. After some fiddling, I was able to get it to turn on, but only for a few seconds before it died. Broken flashlight, dead battery. Not a good combo.
I have plenty of spare batteries in my EDC bag, but there was little point. It was only an inconvenient blackout, and my little Fenix light is probably brighter than the broken flashlight anyways.
Lessons Learned:
- Redundancy is good - of my two flashlights, one worked.
- Check batteries more often.
- Don't buy cheap crap.
Anyways, replacement needed. I may use one of my other flashlights, but they're all bigger two-cell lights and I don't want to dedicate that much space to something I only use about once every six months. I like the size of the Surefire E1B, but don't want to pay that price again, especially for a rarely used backup item. May get a headlamp. Not certain at the moment.
