Tom, let me share a bit of technology for what I think might be the ultimate low-dazzle, low-power, home built, functional but kludge looking red light. I saw the basics of this guy over at Candelpower, IIRC, but I've modified it since.

You will need:
1x MagLite Solitaire
1x 3mm red LED from RadioShak's assortment pack
1x #4 spring from your local hardware store's spring box
1x small bolt or other metal spacer
1x MN/21 battery (Walmart has a two pack of Duracells for about 80 cents; I've only done this with Duracells, I can't comment on other brands!)
1x pair needle nose pliers or very small hemostats
1x pair wirecutters, diagnal or end

Strip the Solitaire, set the bulb aside for latter. I keep the one in the endcap there, so I can go back to normal lighting with a scrounged AAA.

CAREFULLY bend the leads of the LED to match those of the bulb, then trim the leads to the same length. Examine the bends- if you can visably see any kind of crack or gap or pit in the bends, discard it and try again. If you use that, the lead will break off while you are pulling it out for whatever reason, and then you get to ffigure out how to detail strip a Solitaire to get it out again.

Use gentle pressure to push the LED into the bulb socket. You will feel a little bit of resistance- you are literally forcing a square pegs into a round hole. :P Don't worry, it only effects the soft plastic, not the metal, and when you go back to a normal bulb, it will be held just as tightly as before. I think what is happenening is that it is scoring the circles, but they are still there.

Screw the lens assembly back into place. You will have a small (~1mm) gap, but it won't effect water resistance in the least.

Now we start to really make the product liability guys flinch. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Using the pliers, CAREFULLY take the skin of the MN/21. Inside you will find 8 coin batteries. You will want 3 of them. line up thier polarity and carefully drop them into the light. Put in the spring and the spacer. Replace the endcap.

(For those that are interested, each one of these is a 1.5v, 200mA supply. They are marked as LR932, which when I priced them by themselves, were a lot more expensive.)

If the light doesn't light, the batteries are on in backwards.

You will get a very faint red glow from of three of these cells. It is so faint, in caft, that it is really only useable when your eyes are dark adapted. The LED will last just about forever, and three batteries are good for a long time, at least 6 hours, but I've never sat down and timed it. If you need more illumination, take out the spacer, and drop in a fourth battery, then puth the spacer back in. In this configuration, the LED is still not as bright as a red Photon, but it is usable.

Total cost, including a new Solitaire, is about 12 bucks. As I mentioned, carry a regular bulb (and you can acutally get TWO into that endcap), and all you need to do is scrounge a AAA to go back to normal.

If you buy the assortment pack, you also get green and yellow LEDs. The greens seem to have very delicate leads, I can only bend about half of them into place without breaking them. The yellows are just fine, but when I tried this mod on a minimag, they all smoked on a pair of AAs, so I think this will be pushing the limits of thier performance. Don't be suprised if they die on you. This works fine with generally available 3mm(T1) red LEDs from a number of vendors, I just suggest the RS becuase it is easily available to everyone. I have yet to try blue or white LEDs but it should work.


BTW, while you are in the spring bin, grab some #3s. They are better than the ones that come with the MiniMag. You need to shave down the bulb holder (or discard it, and just carry the bulb in a bit of unshrunk heatshrink), and stick the spring down into the bulbwell. Much harder to loose, and much more possitive pressure.