I'm new to this website, but I found this thread and read through most of it and felt that I had to make a contribution.
My boyfriend recently gave me a Magic Flight Launch Box for my birthday a few weeks back. I was quite excited because I decided to not renew my lease and move onto campus to live this year and I had been really worried about what that meant to my smoking. I smoke frequently enough that keeping it hidden from dormmates (boo to living in the conservative south) would be a pretty difficult hassle, and this is something that I take very seriously.
I was somewhat skeptical when I examined it. While I was pleased with how it was put together -- I really found the wood finish charming and there's this homemade feeling that's really pleasant --, I had only had a single experience with vaporizing before with a friend's Volcano and it didn't really wow me. There was a lot of internet heresay I read about too when I did a little research about vaporizing in general. It was a present though and I was still hopeful. It's really a clever little device to look at.
As far as stealthiness goes, I've never found anything better. I like to paint when I smoke, and that's not a very mobile activity, so I didn't really have the option of going somewhere to smoke. I can take a decent amount of vapor in through the launch box in about ten seconds with a motion that's no more conspicuous than raising your hand to your mouth to yawn. However...
I'll be honest, I find there's a huge learning curve in getting the most out of this vaporizor. If there's anything that I can impart to a new owner, especially one who has come from smoking like I have, it's the importance of grinding your weed up. Like, you think you already grind your weed? You need to go even finer. I made the mistake of grinding it to the same consistency that I grind for my bowl and I got less than spectacular results. It took me a great deal of product to get any signaficant sort of effect and I found that I was using more herb than I would have used if I had smoked, which was a big negative for me.
After reading about someone's experiences with the Magic Flight Launch Box, I decided to try grinding my product up a bit more and ran it through my grinder seven times. At this point, the herb was very fine -- not quite a powder, but still finer than you might be accustomed to. This made things so much better. I found that my herb browned evenly throughout and, if I spaced out a single fully-packed trench out, I wouldn't need to refill it for around tthree hours, which is markedly more efficient.
All in all, I'm pretty pleased now that I've got a better understanding of how it works. Some more thoughts: I personally think it's worth it to get some rechargables that run at a bit higher power. I picked up some that are around ~2300 and it turns the wait time for vapor from five seconds to one, and makes for much shorter and heavier hits. It will continue to be my exclusive means of indulging until I'm in a more secure environment, but I feel confident that it's solid enough to get me by. I do miss super bong hits, if we're being honest -- a high from a vaporizor has a differrence from one from a bong. I find there's less of a chance of me being distracted by something mindless, which can be a good and a bad thing.
All in all, it's a solid and clever little device and it fits my needs perfectly. It's not the friendliest thing to someone who doesn't know what they're doing. I share it with friends all the time and despite my best efforts to explain how to use it to them, they always need a few tries..
sorry if i rambled.
