Storm of Ra (project update)
Silent Thunder Ordnance
Storm of Ra prototype
What happened to the Storm? Why isn't it out yet? What is its status? All good questions. The short answer is that, since this picture was taken and initial photographs released, we've had to go in a rather different direction, one thing lead to another, and ultimately a complete redesign occurred.
The crux of the problem was cooling. While we may some day release an ultra-short-turbo light, for the Storm we wanted the performance to be a bit more sustained. Furthermore, because we take our measurements after 30 seconds as per ANSI spec (unless otherwise noted) we couldn't live with the considerable performance drop from heat buildup. Even the heatsink integrated in the head just wasn't enough in this application.
The solution we moved to was active cooling. Tap a little extra power off the batteries, and use it to shift heat off the emitter. This was so successful we were able to SIGNIFICANTLY increase performance, but not without a total redesign. New/different everything, right down to the cell type, and the prototype (not pictured) is producing 8000 emitter lumens and 1 million candela (1000Kcd). That is good for about 2 kilometers of throw and one hell of an impressive beam. Perhaps more impressive though is the efficacy of the active cooling, which allows the light to operate virtually continuously.
We currently have a working prototype (which produced the above numbers), are finalizing design tweaks, and are still debating a few optical elements and their relative effect on performance. We hope to start production in the next couple weeks.