SO, my kit, assembled according to instructions, all connections appear to be good and are seemingly ohm'ing out properly is going all over the place!

the switch seems to do nothing. the lights, while doing the Larson scanner thing, is cycling through all its modes.. slow, medium, fast, bright, dim.

Ive checked and swapped out the battery pack. the problem repeated.

put a reed type NO switch in place of the provided.. nothing

now the thing flickers, and two of the LEDs are not functioning.

what on earth is going on here!?
it is the blue one marked ix v.8.9, and I ordered it through think geek

SO, my kit, assembled according to instructions, all connections appear to be good and are seemingly ohm'ing out properly is going all over the place!

the switch seems to do nothing. the lights, while doing the Larson scanner thing, is cycling through all its modes.. slow, medium, fast, bright, dim.

It sounds like you have a short circuit somewhere-- an accidental connection between the the two sides of the switch. You should be able to verify that with the ohmmeter.

two of the LEDs are not functioning.

This is likely an unrelated issue. Either (1) there are additional short circuits (2) there are locations that aren't connected that should be or (3) the LEDs are backwards. If it was working before, then those LEDs are in the correct way, so (1) or (2) are the case. Again, you should be able to determine which the case is with the ohmmeter.

All better!

just had to re-flow some connections and all is right in the world!

thanks!