Make your own: Glow Stickies

Glowstickies are very useful to locate things in the dark, if you can't get the ones filled with tritium that glow constantly for about 10 years you probably need a stick that is charged with light using glow in the dark materials (GID).

To make your own glow stickies you need a container, the GID material and some small splitring or something similar to provide an attachment point.

The case can be either a small acrilic tube that you can cut to the size you want, it can be a fuse or it can be the case of a mini chemical glowstick that is emptied after being used. For the GID material I use and recommend GID powder or Sand from Glowinc, the green powder/sand can glow for more than 12 hours after being charged with daylight for just 20 minutes and they are also charged with incandescent or flourescent artificial lights.

They have different colors with different afterglow times. You can either fill the stick with the raw powder or raw sand or use a mixture of clear Epoxy and GID powder, in that case make sure you saturate the epoxy as much as you can with the GID powder to have maximum brightness and runtime. To seal the ends if you use the raw powder or sand you can use crazy glue or similar.

A simple project to do and the materials are fun to use with no special tools required. Maybe you can give them a try. If you experiment with different media for the GID powder let me know.

Recta DS56 Global System Compass

The Recta DS56 is a very complete compass, it's similar to many other manufacturer models so you probably can use this review for similar products of different brands.

The DS56 "Global System" means the compass will be useful in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere or if you travel crossing the equator in your trips you need to be careful because many compasses just work fine in the Northern half of the world and start to behave badly in other latitudes.

The DS56 has declination adjustment using a small screw in the back of the compass, it offers a luminiscent bezel, a magnifier, a mirror, sight mark, coordinate scales, side scales, anti slip rubber pads and a clinometer (to measure inclintation and slopes) including a conversion table for degree and slope % in the cover top. I think the only thing missing would be a small red led or something to use it in the dark but the liminiscent material is very good so you probably don't need it.

Besides having all the features you need for map navigation and some extras the best thing about this compass is that is very precise, so you can use it as the tool to calibrate other compasses you can have in your kits, specially the small button sized compasses that tend to be quite unaccurate.

The DS56 retails for about $50, you can read more information at Recta's website.

Osram Dragon Lantern

When the lights go out in a blackout or when daylight is not enough to see in the outdoors you need a compact, reliable and durable light that can provide ambient light to your activities. This is when a lantern is what you need.

The Osram Dragon Lantern uses 4 AA batteries and can use either alkaline, rechargeable NiMH or Lihium AA batteries. It has 2 modes of operation providing 100% brightness or 25% brightness, you switch modes pushing the on/off button (max,min,off).

In the 25% mode the lantern LED can go for about 100 hours of runtime, about 20 to 25 hours in maximum mode. The domed lens provides the same amount of light in every direction and one lantern is enough for a tent or a small room yet they are extremely small, about the size of 2 D batteries stacked up.

The lantern has 4 small foldable feet in the base for extra stability in case you are using the lantern in a non-flat surface, in a normal table or on the floor you don't need them. There is a handle at the top to hang the lantern from a backpack, a pole or some attachment point.

They can be get for about $38 from LightHound.

Huntlight FT-02X

The FT-02X is a versatile 3 watt luxeon led flashlight from Huntlight. It comes with 2 bodies, one for a single C123A lithium cell and a second body for 2xAA batteries.

The leds are either T or U bin leds so they are very bright and the beam is shaped to have a strong hotspot and that makes the flashlight able to light up distant objects quite well. It's not completely focused so you have plenty of useful sidespill as well.

With the C123 battery you get aproximately 120 minutes of light, the first 100 minutes of constant bright light and the last 20 minutes will be dimmer. The light is very compact and pocketable in this configuration. With the 2xAA tube you get up to 175 minutes of light, 150 of flat regulated max brightness the flashlight will be bigger in this configuration but still small enough to fit a pocket.

The bodies are made of HA-III aluminium, extremely strong and able to resist all kind of hits and scratches, o-rings make the light waterproof but probably not suitable for diving. The switch is a reverse clickie located in the tailcap. There is a strong and long pocket clip to carry the light bezel up.

A compact flashlight that can use either lithium cells or the universally common AA batteries is a great combo you can decide what body to use based on the battery type, the size of the light or the runtime you want. It's bright, strong and compact.

You can read more or order for $42 from JS Burly's flashlights.

The Jimi Wallet

The Jimi Wallet is a small and stylish plastic wallet that can be used as a normal wallet, id holder, card holder, badge holder or to store small kits.

When opened the wallet has a card holder on one side that is good for about 4 or 5 credit cards and a money clip useful for some folded bills (not many), there is no additional space for othe items, this is a wallet designed to hold just the essentials.

The translucent cases are fine to flash badges or passes without the need of opening a wallet or looking for them, they have a lanyard hole in case you want to carry the wallet as a badge holder in neck lanyard.

The internal money clip or the credit card holder clip can be removed if you want extra space for bills or if the clip is not useful for you, optionally you can purchase an SD card holder and use the wallet to carry SD cards too.The Jimi is also water resistant in case you were worried.

There is an "x" model identical to the one reviewed here but wiht an extra clip in the outside, the clip can be used to clip the wallet to your pocket or as a money clip to carry some change. The available colors are clear, smoke, magenta, ruby, aqua, orange, green, pink and the only non-translucent color: black. They cost $15 and can be ordered from the jimi website.

Diplomat Pocket Organizers

The pocket organizer was created to provide a way to organize what you put in your cargo pockets when you wear cargo pants. So they have been sized to fit most cargo pants pockets without problems.

The organizers have a zipper to close them, when opened they have elasic straps on one side for pens and other objects and flat pockets in the other side for flat items. There are two small straps with clips that can be used for keys, a small flashlight or some other items.

The pouch is flexible enough to carry some bigger items inside like a cellphone, a bigger flashlight or a PDA inside its case. A multi-tool like a Leatherman with the spare bits will also fit without any problems. The construction is solid, both the inside and the outside are strong, the only weakish point are the small straps with the plastic clips inside but even if not very strong they are great for items that you need to access quickly and you don't want to lose. You can pull a small flashlight or a knife using the straps without opening the organizer completely.

In the outside they have a velcro patch and a mesh pocket for quick access items.

The organizers are strong and expand to carry as many things as you want, they are useful for survival kits, emergency kits, repair kits and others, if you don't wear cargo pants you can always use them to organize your items inside a backpack, bag or briefcase.

They cost $10 and can be ordered in black, olive green or tan from CountyComm.

Belomo 10x triplet loupe

This small magnifier is a 10x 3 element loupe, commonly used in hobbies, geology and jewelry. They are made in Belarus and are a lot better than the similar jewelry loupes you can get from other brands.

The 10x of course means you get things 10 times bigger when you see them under the loupe, you may think that more power can be better but often in 20x or 30x loupes you can only magnify a very small area and you get a blurry image that shakes a lot so all the details are lost, 10x is usually more than enough for regular jobs.

The lens has 21mm of diameter, 19mm of viewable area which is often twice the area that other pocket loupes offer. The focal distance is 28mm. In case of need the loupe can be disassembled for cleaning.

This very nice pocket loupe can be ordered from $15 to $25 from Geo-Tools.com and they also sell a specialized lanyard to carry the loupe on your neck.

Victorinox Mini Champ

The Mini Champ is the most complete keychain sized mini SAK from Victorinox. It is just a 58mm length multitool featuring 16 different tools in a very small presentation.

It has 2 different blades, scissors, nail file with nail cleaner, cuticle pusher, screwdriver with ruler, an exotic orange peeler with scraper, cap filter with a magnetic philips screwdriver, wire stripper, pressurized ballpoint pen and either tweezers or a toothpick (it cames with both but you have to choose one for the slot).

Having two blades is good to keep one razor sharp in case of special needs while using the other for general cutting jobs. Compared to other SAKS these blades are smaller. Besides the orange peeler that is often used for anything but peeling oranges all the tools are good for their purpose and won't show signs of wear after a lot of normal daily use.

A very good mini SAK packed of features not all of them will be used every day but the size is so small than it won't be a problem having the extra tools. If you intensively plan to use a blade you probably need another multi tool.

The Mini Champ can be bought for about $30 to $40, check Froogle's links. If you want to read more about it you can visit Victorinox's webpage.