Well I'm not sure what I accomplished, but I did play with the external pod adjustment tonight as it was a nice dark night.
It adjusts rather weird..... you can turn it "lots" to the left without any noticable improvement, but as soon as you turn it a few turns to the right "no matter how far it had first been turned to the left" it will start shutting the power down.
Maybe thats the nature of pods.. I have never played with them before.
I used my AC power supply that came with it so I wouldn't be dealing with batteries and I played around probably 30 minutes or so total.
The unit is regulated so batteries should also be ok to use too if no ac power supply is available.
Sorry to get off topic here.... but I noticed after several minutes of having it adjusted higher, the red "overheat" light would start to come on.
So I kept bumping it to the right, until I found the majic spot where it would turn off.
I found a tolerance spot within 1/8 of a turn to where if I went to the left 1/8, it would start to slowly come on, and if I went to the right 1/8 turn, the red light would go back off.
So I figured this must be my spot... however when I did tests.. I could not burn matches as far, nor pop balloons as far as before.
I remembered I had asked Justin to tune mine for higher power in the beginning, but I had never left it on long enough to see if the red light would come on.....
At any rate, I adjusted it back up some more and now I'm right back to where I was before on my power.. I'm popping balloons at 25 feet and burning matches at 12. I'm gonna leave it there.
So just remember if you monkey with the settings to keep a lookout to see if the red light comes on and you should be ok.
According to the manual the red light will start to come on at 38 degrees Celcius..... it says for maximum life expectancy, it is recommended to power down the unit when or if this occurs to allow the unit to cool. Depending on ambient temperature, continuous power ability settings will be variable accordingly.
There is no danger of any damage occurring unless the internal temp reaches 80 degrees Celsius... so it appears there is a very nice buffer to which the red light warning allows you to see your temp is starting to climb. The red led is only a warning indicating the temp has surpassed 38 degrees Celsius.
With mine set where I like it for what I believe is the hottest setting, it takes about 3 minutes... maybe 5 "I wasn't counting" to get the red light.
As long as one pays attention to the warning light, I suppose you can run it as hot as you want.
I remember when I was at senkats, mine peaked around 445mw on his meter, I'm assuming I'm right back if not better now since I got my same distance reactions even after having the unit on all that time.... seems these things are pretty bullet proof.. I'm impressed!......
