Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Got a cool little piece of gear for my birthday…a small ‘marker panel’. I was gifted with one of these “Marker Panel, Individual, LW (MPIL)“  from Battle Systems. Although you might ask yourself, what would a person possibly need with something like this I have exactly the perfect use for it. See, most of my gear is either OD or some form of camo. When I go hunting I wear an orange vest, but I wear a camouflage backpack which covers the orange on my back. This thing will be perfect for affixing to the pack to keep my “don’t shoot me” factor high. Also, if I dump my pack or gear somewhere so I can travel lightly for whatever reason, I can find my way back to it a good deal easier. There’s a review of it over at Jerking The Trigger. I like that theres a section of velcro for attaching a glint patch of some kind…makes things a little easier at night and in the falling light. The whole thing folds up to about the size of a book of matches and weighs less than an ounce. Coverage is enough to easily meet the mandated minimum square inches of orange cover for hunting season.Given the small size and high visibility, I’ll probably stuff this into the little wilderness survival kit I take with me hunting and fishing.

As I was playing with this, it got me thinking of the original marker panels this was based on..the VIS-17 panels. Never seen one before so…ordered a couple to play with. Hey, if small is good then bigger is better, right?