UCO Clarus LED Lantern
Lewis Creek Shooting School 04.19.13
I call it my everything bag. It contains my primary camera, a pair of Steiner binoculars, a hand-held GPS, extra batteries in C, AA, and AAA, a dog leash, a pair of cheap two-way radios, medicine, lighters, glasses, lens cleaner, cigars, etc, etc, etc. This bag goes in the vehicle I’m driving because you simply never know when you’ll need something. Of course, it also contains a flashlight.
I’m the first to admit I’m a sucker for flashlights, but the versatile UCO Clarus LED Lantern is more than a flashlight. It can be used as either a lantern or a flashlight, depending on your needs and it makes a pretty darn good one at that. It’s tough and it’s water resistant. There are three intensity settings with the highest an impressive 150 lumens.
What makes it so impressive, though is the lantern feature. The outer barrel slides telescopes out and the backside of the flashlight reflector bowl becomes the reflector bowl in the lantern mode. As a flashlight, it is slightly larger than you’d expect, but as a lantern, it puts out an impressive amount of light in a tiny package.
This is the perfect light for emergency use or as a personal light on camping trips. My wife Cherie and I have used it on two cross-country trips that mostly involved boondock camping and I used it for every thing from lighting to cook supper when the fuse blew in the camper to negotiating outside the camper on dark nights.
Dick Jones is an award winning outdoor writer and a member of the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association Board of Directors. He writes for four North Carolina Newspapers as well as regional and national magazines. He’s hunted and fished most of his life but shooting has been his passion. He’s a former High Master, Distinguished Rifleman, and AAA class pistol shooter. He holds four Dogs of War Medals for Team Marksmanship as shooter, captain and coach. He ran the North Carolina High Power Rifle Team for six years and the junior team two years after that. Within the last year, he’s competed in shotgun, rifle and pistol events including the National Defense Match and the Bianchi Cup. He’ll be shooting the Bianchi, the NDM, the National High Power Rifle Championship, The Rock Castle AR15.com Three Gun Championship and an undetermined sniper match this shooting season.
He lives in High Point, North Carolina with his wife Cherie who’s also an outdoor writer and the 2006 and 2011 Northeast Side by Side Women’s Shotgun Champion. Both Dick and Cherie are NRA pistol, rifle, and shotgun instructors and own Lewis Creek Shooting School.
