Frenchieboy Posted October 24, 2011 Report Share Posted October 24, 2011 (edited) I bought a Cree Torch from ALDI last week with the intention of trying it as a gun lamp for "bunny bashing"! I have made a temporary mounting system for it to go no my Browning .22LR Pump Action Rifle and tried it out, here are my thoughts on it! The torch is a LIVARNO LUX and cost £14.99 (Without batteries). It is listed as 114lm and said to have a burn time of aproximately 7 hours with a beam of up to 229m. The torch carries a 3 years warranty and runs on 2 x LR20 batteries wieghing about 1&1/2 lbs with the batteries fitted. The body is just under 4cm diameter and the lens is about 5.5cm diameter. The beam is easily adjustable from Flood to Spot - Adjusted by a ring between the lens and the switch. The overall length is 27cm! As the photo shows I used a couple of jubilee clips to fasten a piece of Weaver Rail which clips on to an upturned scope mount making the torch/lamp gun mounted with the switch accessible by using a thumb of the left hand to turn it on and off while holding the gun. I intend to make a bracket up to fix it to the loading slide under my rifle when I have time. I am sure that others will come up with a more permenant sort of mounting system! OK, so how does the torch perform out in the field? I tried it the other day using a pair of batteries sold by ALDI under the brand name of "AEROCELL" - A word of warning here, do not bother with these batteries, they are very poor quality and didn't last very long at all. I had to cut that session very short and order some DURACELL ULTRAs off "The Bay" costing under £10 for 4 x packs of 2. The Duracell Ultra batteries have proved to run the torch in a very reasonable way and seem to last quite well, how long they last remains to be seen but they are still as bright now as when I first fitted them! I took the rifle and lamp to one of my permissions this evening where I know that the rabbits have not seen a lamp for over 3 months. There was quite a stiff breeze and it was fairly cold so there were not all that many rabbits to try it with, but that's lamping for you. I was using the torch/lamp without any sort of filter so the beam was a very white light. The first rabbit I got in the lamp went straight in to a squat at about 60 yards, the white beam did not seem to make it at all "twitchy. Through the scope (A Tasco World Class 3-9X50) the rabbit was more than sufficiently lit up to clearly identify it and get a clean shot off with the aim point being the eyes. The bullet hit spot on target (Straight between the eyes)and the rabbit flipped over without barely a twitch! I had another 7 rabbits in the beam from about 30 yards out to 75 yards. Out of these I managed to hit another 5 rabbits, all illuminated more than well enough to get a clear aim at! 2 more rabbits did a runner as soon as I put the lamp on them but all the others stayed in a squat - not bad for a very white beam. As for the range of the beam being listed as 229 yards, I found that a little questionanable but I did manage to pick up a fox at about 150 yards, The lamp was not bright enough to clearly light the fox up but it was bright enough to pick the eyes as a target and to have got a shot at it if I had wanted to. However, I turned the lamp off after about 5 seconds on the fox as I did not want Charlie educated to the lamp and I only had a .22LR, nowhere near enough fire power to have dealt with him anyhow - His time will come when I am out there with my .243 and the Lightforce 140, he will not feel so relaxed about the situation then - I hope! So, what are my thoughts and observations? The lamp, in my opinion, is more than suitable for lamping rabbits out to around about 75 yards and gives enough light to clearly identify your targer at that range with the beam set to "spot". There is a little spillage of light sideways but not enough to have worried me. It would suit a .22LR, a 17HMR (To within reasonable ranges - not the 200 yards that some people claim to shoot rabbits at on the lamp) or an air rifle as the range of the lamp is more than enough to match the effective range of any of these 3 types of gun. It is not overly heavy when fitted to the rifle and there are no wires to hang down and catch as you get over fences, hedges or gates etc. I would like to see a stock mounted switch, Maybe there are some about but I haven't taken the time to look yet, and I would like to find some sort of thin amber filter to take the "whiteness" out of the light. The one thing that I will definitely be changing is the colour of the torch body - It is a bright shiny silver coloured torch that reflects the slightest bit of moon light, stars or street lights in the distance and is likely to make you stand out like a sore thumb - I plan on simply wrapping mine in some spare camo tape which should do the job fairly amicably. On the whole I am quite happy with it as a scope mounted gun lamp for bunny bashing with my .22LR and to me it represents very good value for money, which is more than can be said for the "AEROCELL" batteries that I bought with it. It certainly gets the thumbs up from me! I hope this "review" is of help to other members. Below are a couple of photos showing it mounted to my rifle! (The loading slide on the rifle is locked back for the photos for safetys sake holding the firing mechanism open) Edited October 24, 2011 by Frenchieboy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djgeoff Posted October 24, 2011 Report Share Posted October 24, 2011 nice write up, may well look this torch up cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evil Elvis Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 (edited) Nice write up dude, ive been looking for something like this for lamping out of the window with rather than using a lightforce, so what if the beam onlu goes 150yards....who many "sane" people do you o know who shot rabbits at that range with a .22lr? There are smaller more compact ones on ebay for not much more that are not blingy!!!!! :lol: Edited October 25, 2011 by Evil Elvis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frenchieboy Posted October 25, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Nice write up dude, ive been looking for something like this for lamping out of the window with rather than using a lightforce, so what if the beam onlu goes 150yards....who many "sane" people do you o know who shot rabbits at that range with a .22lr? There are smaller more compact ones on ebay for not much more that are not blingy!!!!! :lol: I have tried to be as honest in my review as possible but when doing something like this I believe it is important to say what the "down sides" are and how you might improve it. As for "How many "sane"people do you know who would shoot rabbits at that range with a .22lr" Well let's face it EE, we all know only too well that there will always be a few that claim that they can head shoot rabbits on the lamp with a catapult at 250 yards, or even a hare with a .243 at 704 yards! As the saying goes "There's always one"! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotland rifles Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 just to mention i have one of these from ldlls and its a cracking bit of kit, took a bunny last week at 70 yards with the 17hmr. nicewrite up. bob. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazooka Joe Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 (edited) Slightly off subject, but the same manufacture; Spiderfire CREE 3W IR Infrared Night Vision LED Flashlight Anyone running one of these with a Gen-2....interested to know what range you are getting with one, & what quality the torch gives to the NV, with & without ? Edited October 25, 2011 by Bazooka Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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