Tag Archives: gear

Video – The History and Components of The US Military’s ALICE and LINCLOE LCE Systems

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A rather dry but informative video about the history and development of the old ALICE gear system used by the US military.

Older and wiser heads than I, who actually used this stuff, will have their own opinions, no doubt, and thats as it should be. ALICE gear is another bit of legacy gear that is fairly common in survivalist circles. The stuff was so ubiquitous and abundant that I doubt there’s anyone who doesnt have an ALICE pack, mag pouch, our other component sitting in their gear. It may not be ‘Tier 1’ stuff these days, but for the price it’s not a bad choice for certain usages. I find the ALICE packs, with an upgrade to the shoulder straps, to be a fairly competent piece of kit for an emergency bag. Since the market abhors a vacuum, there are several companies that make bags to go on the ALICE pack frame. My emergency gear in the truck is in a Spec-Ops Brand bag on an ALICE frame and I like it alot. Theyre stupid expensive these days but I think I got mine on closeout a few years back for around $75 each. I love Spec-Ops Brand gear but they seem to be perpetually on the brink of going out of business. They used to have all sortsa cool, well-thought out, and well-made gear. Now it seems they just have a few items and not much else. A shame, I really like their products.

Back in the day, ALICE gear was pretty much what every survivalist started with. Nowadays its more MOLLE/PAL webbing and gear. Good stuff, no doubt, but sometimes I like the nostalgia of the old green ALICE gear.

Because of the huge amount of ALICE gear out there, there is a thriving industry in upgrades and accessories for the ALICE system…adapters to let you use MOLLE pouches and vice versa. Replacement packs for the ALICE frames. Things like that. I personally think much of the ALICE gear is inferior to what we have now with the MOLLE stuff, but I really do like the upgraded bags, like the Spec-Ops, on the ALICE frame. The newer plastic MOLLE pack frames are alright, I suppose, and I do have some, but for ruggedness and versatility I really like the ALICE frames…especially when combined with the cargo shelf for carrying things like fuel/water cans and cases of ammo.

Anyway, an interesting bit of history about some legacy gear that many of us still have in our stockpiles.

 

Travel food II

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I made a post a few days ago about the ‘just in case’ dining solution I carry with me in my checked luggage in case I get stuck having to overnight in the airport when I travel. It’s primary features are that it takes up as minimum an amount of space as possible, assumes electricity is available (for the immersion heater), and assumes water is available (for reconstituting the freezedrieds and making hot drinks). These last two are not a tall order, even in an airport that is ‘closed’ for the night. I have spent nights camped out next to an electrical outlet watching movies on my phone, using the airports wifi, wrapped in my woobie, and dining on whatever snackage I packed in my bag.

But what about where water isn’t guaranteed, and neither is electricity? I actually have a somewhat similar setup but it’s a bit more space-intensive.

We’re all familiar with the usual one-liter Nalgene bottles, right? The cool thing about them is that there are a lot of accessories out there designed specifically for their shape and profile…carry pouches, special lids, etc, etc. It’s a lot like the AR…there may be a better choice, but the ubiquity of the item and its tremendous third-party support make it a sensible choice. I must have a half dozen of the Nalgene bottles sitting in my kitchen. Theyre just handy. But…did you know that they make a larger version in that same general design envelope? It’s exactly like your regular Nalgene bottle except slightly longer to accommodate 50% more liquid. Still take the same lids, will still fit most open-top pouches, but gives you an extra margin of liquid for those thirsty days and long trips.

The regular Nalgene is 32 oz. The supersized one is 48 oz. Since the only dimensional difference between the two is overall length and the diameter is the same between the two, cups that are designed to nest over the bottom of the 32oz Nalgene will fit exactly the same on the bottom of the 48oz Nalgene. Convenient. Same for the mouth of the two bottles. Lids, caps, etc, are completely interchangeable.

Although Maxpedition makes the bottle holder I am currently using, other companies make a similar product. The important thing is that they have various attachment points to allow you to carry the whole thing either on a carry strap, MOLLE’d to your gear, or by other means. It’s also really important that it have some type of storage on it for the essentials. With enough MOLLE coverage you can add whatever pouch you like to it to hold your accessories.

48 oz Nalgene bottle carrier on left, 32 oz ("normal size") on right. Larger carrier gives slightly more onboard storage space.

48 oz Nalgene bottle carrier on left, 32 oz (“normal size”) on right.

This is the setup I take with me when I go hunting, fishing, or anywhere I figure I’ll have some kind of al fresco dining experience. It’s strictly for field cooking, although, obviously, water is water. The purpose of this setup is to give me everything I need to crack open some Mountain House, instant oatmeal, ramen, or any other ‘just add hot water’ meal. This is what has worked for me so far, what works for you is up to you to discover. My setup:

  • Maxpedition bottle holder – Keeps everything in one place, has plenty of carry and attachment options, and has a useful-sized accessory pouch for everything below.
  • Nalgene 48 oz. bottle – I hate having to filter water. I carry a LifeStraw in my bag, but for my out-n-about cooking needs a full 48oz of water is usually plenty. A small Sawyer filter would work but any filter is going to either need to be carried separately due to space concerns on the bottle holder. Alternatively, with enough MOLLE you can add a small pouch dedicated to your filter. Maybe.
  • Screwtop drink lid – I have these on all my Nalgene bottles. Makes drinking on the move much easier. High recommend.
  • Esbit Stove – Smaller and more compact than a small butane stove w/ cartridge. Tradeoff is that it doesn’t boil water as quick. But…it does work.
  • Esbit fuel tabs – Hard to have too many of these. They do double duty as emergency firestarters. I keep a handful in my hunting bag.
  • Titanium spork – Any spork or plastic utensil will do. I went the Gucci route because I’m a major gear queer and I like nice things. Get a cheaper plastic one and you’ll be fine. Also threw in the CRKT food tool because I had it laying around.
  • Firestarter – Matches and lighters are my first go-to, but this will light an Esbit tab if you know what youre doing.
  • Matches – Far easier to light pretty much anything with good matches than the other methods. Again, can’t really have too many. Keep ’em dry. We’ve talked about this.
  • Cooking cup – Titanium again. Beacuse. There are plenty of cheaper alternatives out there, but just make sure that your Nalgene bottle will nest inside it.

This is the setup I use for fishing, hunting, or just being afield. A small musette bag filled with freezedrieds, repackaged ramen, instant soup, instant oatmeal, cofffe/hotchoc/tea, and a small water filter would, used in conjunction with the above mentioned kit, make a huge difference in a crisis and not take up much room. In fact, in the back of my truck is a tall .50 can that has a setup almost exactly like that. It’s compact, durable, pretty complete, and can keep me fed for a good bit of time if I’m just sitting in my truck waiting for the snow plow. Might have to dig it out and take some pictures. But this is the setup I use for the ‘running around’ occasions. However, it does have some utility for a small ‘run out the door’ emergency setup if you have a small satchel of freeze drieds to go with it.

 

 

Legacy gear – GI Anglehead

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Im in the midst of completely reorganzing my basement stash of food, supplies, and other gear. It’s forcing giving me the opportunity to go through a lot of gear that I’ve collected over the thirty years I’ve lived in this house. One of the things I came across was a box of GI anglehead flashlights.

These things are old school with their incandescent light bulbs. They have nice enough features….belt clips, colored filters, lanyard loop, momentary on-off switch for signalling purposes, etc. But that bulb leaves a lot to be desired in a  world of LED brightness and efficiency.

Out of curiosity, I decided to order a couple LED replacement bulbs.

I want to say, right off the bat, that this was not an efficient and economical way to go. The replacement bulbs, on Amazon, are about $17. For $17 you can buy a fairly decent flashlight that’s already LED native. However, I was still intellectually curious about the difference in performance that the LED bulb would offer the GI anglehead over the regular bulb.

Res ipsa loquitur:

  Clearly, the LED has an advantage over the OEM incandescent bulb. And while this is simply an interesting anecdote regarding the tactics of upgrading these flashlights, it has a lesson about the strategy of upgrading these flashlights. The lesson here is that sometimes the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Legacy gear can sometimes be brought up to modern standards, but sometimes it is more effort and expense to do so. At that point it’s time to throw up your hands and realize it’s time to clean house and start over.

Let me give you an example of this. I had a friend, now deceased, whom I have mentioned before. He thought that he needed a .30 caliber semi-auto rifle to prepare for the upcoming apocalypse. He wound up, in one incarnation, buying a Remington 7400, finding some sort of military-ish stock, locating aftermarket ten-round magazines of questionable reliability, and going through all sorts of financial contortions to basically re-invent the M1A. If he had just bought a Springfield Armory M1A he would have saved himself a ton of time, money, and reliability issues. But he had the 7400 and thought it could be made ‘just as good as’ a military-style semi-auto .308.

Sometimes it just isnt worth updating or ‘upgrading’ a legacy item when the technology and manufacturing have advanced. Here’s another example – I have a few incandescent MagLites that I purchased twenty years ago. They have an on/of switch, a krypton bulb, and run times of a couple hours on a pair of D-batts. In my pocket, right now, I have a Streamlight that has an on/off/low/high/strobe switch, an unbreakable LED bulb, and will put out as much light as the old MagLite…and it’s a fraction of the size. Inflation adjusted, its about the same price. (And, yes, you can buy LED upgrades for MagLites but they don’t work as well as a native LED MagLite. Reflector geometry  and all that.) So, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense to upgrade or update these 20-year-old lights. No reason to toss them, though. They can serve in a tertiary role around the house or something.

As I continue with my reorganization project, I am finding a few items here and there that are old enough that it just doesn’t make sense to upgrade them to modern standards. Some things are worth it, yes, but you really need to look at each item with an objective view as to whether its worth upgrading or replacing.

So…there’s some data on flashlights for ya.

Bag O’ Tricks(tm) – Wordage on cordage

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I don’t think there’s anyone who could argue that paracord isn’t a handy item to have. People use it to replace their shoelaces, weave it into bracelets and belts, or just keep big hanks of it in their gear, in order to always have some handy.

True paracaord is made of multiple strands of smaller cordage, usually seven strands, and those strands are usuall made of three smaller strands. (Don’t quote me on those numbers.) The cheap Chinese knock off cordage is just a nylon sleeve with some sort of poly fiber core. Avoid that crap. Spend the money, get the good stuff. Take a deep breath, tense up your core, and pay the money for a giant spool of the stuff. There’s no point in doing things halfway and buying, say, 100′ of the stuff and thinking “that’ll do it.” There’s just so much to do with paracord.

For me, the reason I carry it in the Bag O’ Tricks is to tie doors open, tie doors shut, hoist things up to places, secure things closed, hold things open, create lanyards for gear, etc, etc. Dude, there are hundreds of reasons to have a generous amount of this stuff in your gear. But the problem is, how the heck do you store it neatly? I mean, you want it to be stored in such a manner that it doesn’t turn into a rats nest that leaves you standing there with a Gordian knot of paracord.

Originally, I simply rolled all my paracord into ball, like yarn, and then wrapped it in a couple cut-inner-tube-rubber-bands to keep it from unspooling itself. But, there were a couple problems… Most of the time it worked out just fine, but more than a few times the rough-n-tumble of tossing my bag around would sometimes overcome my efforts and things would get all tangle-y. The other problem was that for the amount of paracord I wanted to keep in my bag (the more, the better) the ball of cord was fairly substantial and not a very efficient use of space in my bag.

Originally, I figured the simple solution was to simply wind the cord around something to keep it one place. I tried several different ways of dong it but everything seemed to fall short. First, I chucked a length of dowel into a power drill and wound a bunch of cord on that. It worked, kinda, but still unwound itself at times. Then I tried something with a flatter profile… I cut a butterfly-shaped wedge of thick cardboard and wound it around that. That worked pretty well but eventually with all the banging around the cardboard got bent and lost its rigidity (hey, it happens to us all, right?)… back to square one.

Surely I can’t be the only person with this desire to have an organized way of carrying around a buncha paracord, right? What does the free market come up with?  Handiest I found was this –  a simple piece of plastic with a built in razor cutter and a pocket to hold the cigarette lighter used for melting the ends of the cord. To keep things even more organized, I keep it in a snug ziploc bag…this way if it does start to unravel (which, so far, it hasn’t) it all stays in one place.

One other item I found interesting was this geegaw. Its a belt-mountable dispenser that lets you pull off a length of cord and cut it – all one handed. Its 50′ worth of cord, which is useful, though I prefer to have a lot more than just 50′ worth. Where it shines is that this is about the size of a pair of tape measures side-by-side, keeps it self free from snagging and tangles, is refillable, and is just generally pretty well thought out. If you don’t mind it being only 50′ this is a pretty nice one-stop-shopping solution.

I really can’t overemphasize the utility of paracord. It really is one of those products that is ‘only limited by your imagination’.. But my experience has been that there are a lot of times, even without the world coming to an end, where having this stuff is amazingly useful. I really think you’d be foolish not to make this stuff a ‘must have’ in your emergency gear or everyday carry bag.

As an aside, it is also worth mentioning that this type of paracord is also available in a variety of colors….ODG for those military and subtle needs, and blaze orange for the ‘needs to be visible’ applications. And pretty much every color in between.

BUT….make sure you’re getting the multiple-strand stuff. Not the cheapo Made In China ‘mil-type’ crap. Lowering your gear from the rooftop of a flooded WalMart into a waiting rowboat is no time to discover that saving $15 by buying the ‘almost as good’ product was  a bad idea. Don’t cheap out on gear that might turn out to be very mission-critical someday.

And while we’re on the subject, for Crom’s sake, learn to tie some knots. Without getting into boffin country, there are an amazing amount of knots out there that have qualities that make them very much worth knowing. Grab five feet of paracord, go jump on YouTube, and learn some useful knots. Seriously.

The year is 1.9% over and I still haven’t bought any guns.

I have gone __7__ days without buying a gun this year.

Bag O’ Tricks – Batteries edition

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There’s nothing that says you have to have battery-powered devices to help you get through the unexpected crisis, but they sure do make things easier.

When it comes to electronics, there’s a handful of things I keep in the Bag O’ Tricks ™ at all times…flashlights (plural), radio, USB charger, scanner. All of these devices run on batteries and if a crisis occurs, you are definitely going to want to have a spare reload (or three) for your devices.

You do what works for you, but here’s where I’ve landed after much thought and twenty years of practice.

First step is battery compatibility – its the BoT(tm), not a CostCo. I don’t have the room or the back muscles to carry several different battery types. I have zero interest in carrying around a handful AA batteries, 9v batteries, CR123 batteries, AAA batteries, and a couple coin batteries. Try to get all your gear singing from the same battery songbook. This is where your first value judgement, and possibly compromise, is going to have to take place. Let’s say your radios take AA but your flashlight takes CR123. You’ve got three choices at this point:

  • Swap out the flashlight for one that takes AA
  • Swap out the radio for one that takes CR123
  • Carry two different types of batteries

It is entirely possible that, given three ‘Tier One’ pieces of gear, one of them might have to be swapped out for second tier in order to provide battery compatibility. How much are you willing to ‘step down’ in terms of utility in exchange for those streamlined logistics? Fortunately, almost everything has a functional, reliable, usable, quality alternative. Maybe you’re ‘perfect’ flashlight runs on CR123 but you need one that runs on AA…but you hate giving up all the awesome features of that particular CR123 flashlight. Well, look around, there is almost certainly an equivalent one out there that runs on AA.

And, just to be clear, I’m not advocating one type of battery over another. I’m just saying whatever battery you choose, try to stick with all your devices running off that one.

For my BoT(tm), I try to keep stuff as small as possible. Most small devices run on AA (or AAA) batteries and thats what I’ve decided to standardize on for my Bag O’ Tricks(tm). That doesnt mean my other gear doesn’t use other batteries…it just means that everything in my bag, which may be all I have in terms of resupply for the immediate time being, runs off the same battery – AA.

The battery devices I keep in my bag are pretty straightforward: AM/FM pocket radio with earphones, Icom R6 scanner (uses same headphones as AM/FM radio), a couple flashlights, and a USB charger.

The only exception to the ‘one battery’ rule is that sometimes I’ll have a rechargeable device (cell phone, flashlight) that can be recharged through USB. For those, I have a USB charger in my bag that runs off of…you guessed it…AA batteries.

I carry 16 AA batteries in a pair of Maxpedition battery pouches. There are other battery cases on Amazon and you’ll find no shortage of variations on this theme. I came into the Maxpedition ones years ago and never bothered looking for others. The plastic case is available from plenty of other makers, but the cordura pouch from Maxpedition does a nice job of keeping things handy and muffling any rattle. The most important thing is to get a case or carrier that completely isolates the battery from everything else around it and protects the contacts.

Don’t just think you can wrap your batteries with some tape over the contacts, throw them in your bag, and be fine. Bad juju, man. Same for sticking them in a cigar tube, or a cut length of PVC with duct tape over the ends. Your electronics (radio, light, gps, phone, etc.) are all critical pieces of gear. Don’t half-ass it by throwing your batteries in a bag where theyre going to short circuit against each other and be useless to you when you finally need them…assuming they don’t set your bag on fire first.

As for batteries themselves, we all know that at some point the batteries crap the bed and turn your gear into junk. I go with lithium AA batts. They are way more expensive than regular AA’s but a) they leak far far less than regular AA’s, and b) they don’t weaken over time or in temperature extremes the way regular AA’s do. Yup, theyre more expensive…but when I’m navigating my way out of the basement of a building during a blackout I will absolutely not care that they cost several times what the regular batteries cost…I’ll just be relieved they work and didnt puke in my flashlight.

And, by the way, when it comes to flashlights is there any reason not to have them use LED’s? They sip battery power and are far less delicate than the old krypton bulb lights. All my flashlights, except for legacy stuff, are LED these days. And for situations where you want to use batteries sparingly they are absolutely the better choice.

And although it isnt technically a battery, I always carry a USB plug in and one of those octopus-like multi-adaptor USB charging cables. This way, if there’s electricity, I can charge whatever USB device I or someone with me has. This really shines when traveling and need to charge up my phone at the airport so I can screw around on the internet while awaiting my flight.

I like to think that any crisis I get into where I have to rely on what’s in my BoT(tm) will be a short term one and that I’ll be back at my base of operations shortly. But life has a way of throwing curveballs and if I’m stuck living out of my bag, so to speak, for a couple days I have no doubt there will be at least one or two battery changes for some of my gear…so, I carry two 8-packs of AA lithium batteries.

There you go. A glance into the reasoning about whats in the BoT(tm) and why.

 

CostCo solar ‘generator’

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Here’s a pet peeve of mine. I was up at CostCo and beheld this:
It is what is being marketed, wildly inaccurately in my opinion, as a ‘solar generator’. What is this thing, you ask? It’s a battery and some solar panels to recharge it. If anything here is a ‘generator’ it is the solar panels themselves. The battery part of this thing doesnt generate electricity…it stores it. The battery part is no more a ‘generator’ than a 55 gallon blue barrel of water is a ‘portable well’. Not sure why, but this misuse of terminology really grates my grapes.

Ignoring the inaccurate advertising, is this thing worth having? Maybe. Honestly, I’m more interested in the batter/inverter unit itself than I am the panels. In addition to being able to be charged by the panels at what I am guessing is a fairly slow rate, it has plug-ins to allow recharging from household (or generator) current.

Something like this probably has some merit for a very low-draw scenario…running LED lights or maybe powering a radio. While I’m sure the battery is up to more demanding tasks when fully charged, its the ability to recharge completely and in a timely manner off the kinda small panels that I’m curious about.

There are no shortage of ‘battery in a box’ products out there. While I love a turn-key solution as much as the next guy I think that I’d prefer to fab up my own with premium components for longevity and increased function. But…interesting to see this at CostCo. First freeze driers, now these. Someone at CostCo purchasing is wearing some of our brand of tinfoil, methinks.

 

JetBoil Stash

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Whenever I go hunting or otherwise tromping through the boonies, one of the things I take with me is an Esbit stove and a bunch of fuel tabs. This is so that I can boil up some water to use to make meal out of some freeze drieds while I’m out hunting. I don’t drink coffee or tea, so my need for super hot water in the field is usually just limited to rehydrating something. Certainly, I can make a cup of hot beverage if I want, I’m just saying that I normally don’t.

The Esbit stove works pretty well for what it is. It’s main advantages, to me, are the compactness and portability combined with the light weight and durability of the fuel – fuel tabs about the size of a piece of bubble gum. The drawback is that these fuel tabs don’t put out as much heat as other fuel sources, but there is always a tradeoff in things. The end result is that it can take a little bit more time to boil some water than it would using other fuel sources.

The supermegawesome gadget for making hot water in the field is the JetBoil line of products. Theyre basically an isobutane cartridge, same as found on a lot of backpacking stoves, and a cooking vessel with a heat exchanger. I was always reluctant to pick one up because, up to this point, my needs had ben adequately met with the Esbit stove and I regarded the tall Jetboil vessels, about the size of a large travel mug, to be rather bulky and overkill for my needs…after all, I only need about 12-16 oz of water for a freezedried meal.

Additionally, for my ‘crisis cooking’ at home in the event of some sort of disaster I have a kerosene stove, a Coleman stove, and an Omnifuel stove that will literally burn any liquid fuel. A JetBoil would be a quadriary level of redundancy…maybe even deeper than that.

But…I was killing some time the other day and wandered into REI and saw that JetBoil had a smaller, much more compact version called the Stash. The attraction was that everything needed nested into the small-enough -to-be-handy-but-large-enough-to-be-useful cooking pot. I already carry a titanium cooking cup to use with the Esbit stove, and this stove and fuel container would easily fit inside that…so it fits within a footprint that I am already using.

Curiosity got ahold of me and I wondered how long it would take to actually bring a goodly amount of water to a rolling boil. The most water-intensive of my freezedrieds calls for 16 oz. of water. I figured I’d throw caution to the wind and poured 20 oz. into the vessel, put the lid on, cranked the flame, and started the timer. Two and a half minutes later it was boiling mightily. That’s pretty sweet. It takes significantly longer to achieve that same result with the Esbit stove.

The most obvious drawback is that this stove, and others like it, run on isobutane cartridges. The reasonable question is where do you get additional cartridges in a crisis? The same place you get gasoline, kerosene, white gas, and propane – you don’t. You either have a stash of it, or you scrounge it from somewhere. But, as I said, I already have cooking options for cooking with gasoline, kerosene, white gas, propane, and alcohol. I’ll lay in a case or two of cartridges for this thing and that’ll be that. I really only plan on using it for hunting and boonie humping purposes.

So..a new piece of gear to play with.I’m being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century but at I’m getting there.

 

CostCo flashlight

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I know it doesn’t seem like it, but not everything in my life has to be high-end (or high-mid-end) tactical. Sometimes a $29 MagLite is plenty for the anticipated task and doesn’t call for a $150 SureFire.

I mention this because I was at CostCo the other day and beheld this:

It’s a made-in-China flashlight from CostCo, but it had a couple features that made me want to examine it a bit closer. It has a focusing head, which is, I suppose, a nice feature to have. But more importantly it runs off of either a USB rechargeable battery or a battery pack of AA batts. In addition, the flashlight has a port to allow you to use it as a battery source to charge other USB devices. And, of course, its got some heft to it for those occasions that call for percussive remediation.

The USB charging (both in a and out) caught my attention because it seems like an interesting potential for a vehicle flashlight. I currently keep a D-cell LED MagLite in the console but I have to change out the batteries every year…just in case. This would be a light I could leave plugged into a USB plug-in in the cigarette lighter. The more astute among you will think “Won’t that drain the battery?”. I don’t think so. First, the draw is not that much, and I believe that once it’s charged it’s barely a trickle to maintain that charge. However, I’ll hook it up to one of the backup batteries in the house and see how long it takes to draw it down.

But I also like that I can use it to recharge my mobile devices as well. A handy feature in an emergency. Also a handy feature when you only have one cigarette lilghter outlet in your vehicle and it’s charging your phone, leaving your USB speaker uncharged. (Yeah, my vehicle is a fleet vehicle trade-in so no fancy options like Bluetooth, USB chargers, or even a CD player….so, when I travel, its a USB Bluetooth speaker and Spotify off my phone. And both need charging.)

As far as light throw, this thing isnt bad. It’s worth the $22 I paid for it, and seems a decent choice for a light to keep in the truckbox or wherever for those situations that don’t require the best and brightest. At $22 a throw theyre fairly disposable and would make decent stocking stuffers. One drawback is that if you attach a lanyard to the back of this thing it precludes being able to unscrew the cover to the USB charging ports. Que cera cera.

This thing has three modes all from one button – Off-high-med-low-off… in that order. Pretty basic. The head on this thing focuses to a room-filling flood and can be narrowed down for more focused lighting. It’s no replacement for a MagLite, IMHO, but the ‘deaul fuel’ nature of the thing, and the USB charging features, are some very nice points. Footprint is about the same as a MagLite although maybe a bit longer to accommodate the focusing head feature.

Anyway,. for twentytwo bucks, its a reasonable choice for a light for inside the gun safe, the kitchen junk drawer, or for scenarios where you don’t wanna risk an expensive high-end flashlight.

BOT Q&A

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This landed in comments and became a self-fulfilling prophecy:

Got a question that might turn into an easy post for you.

So you have the good ole ‘Bag ‘O Tricks’. It probably has some flavor of a 9mm sub gun, some expensive electronics, an a fat wad of 20’s. No need to confirm or deny these things. The point is that the cumulative value of this sort of bag is kinda pricey and it probably has a gun or two in it.

Does this spendy bag go with you every time you leave the house or just sometimes? When you go into places does it stay in the truck? Get secured somehow?

How do you balance risk of this pricy kit (not to mention potentially arming a criminal) with access for your personal use?

I ask because I am directly pondering these questions for my own life. Thanks in advance and happy Friday!

– Ryan

Here’s a fairly recent link to the Bag Of Tricks ™.

So, lets address the questions that Friend Of The Blog, Ryan, asked.

It probably has some flavor of a 9mm sub gun, some expensive electronics, an a fat wad of 20’s.

One of my older Glock 19’s is in there in a UM84 holster along with a couple spare mags. There’s a small AM/FM radio in there as well as my ICOM R6. Interestingly, I do not keep a large amont of cash in the bag, although I probably should. I usually just carry a couple hundred bucks on me at any give time just in case I get mugged, decide I want another P95, and reach a deal with the mugger.

Does this spendy bag go with you every time you leave the house or just sometimes?

Spendy is pretty relative. When I was a starving college kid in my twenties, everything was spendy. Nowadays…different story. The practical cash value of the bag and all it’s contents is probably  about a grand. That’s not an inconsequential amount, but its stuff that I’ve been carrying around for almost twenty years…so, basically, that bag and it’s contents have cost me one dollar a week since I bought it…and as time goes by, that average goes lower. I’d be pissed if I lost it or someone stole it, sure…but it’s monetary value, to me, isn’t enough to keep me from doing what I do with it.

It doesnt leave with me everytime I leave the house but it does go with me to work every day. And on out-of-town road trips. But for when I’m heading over to CostCo on the weekend or going to pick up my mail at the PO? Nope. Unless….there’s some ‘heightened concern’ going on. I usually leave it in the truck behind the seat and I’ve never worried about it there.

I ask because I am directly pondering these questions for my own life.

It’s subjective, man. Just like the stuff that you put and carry in your bag, your reasons and motivations will be unique to you. Only you can decide why you’re putting together such a bag and how you’ll use it…which will determine the value of what you put in there.

My BOT isn’t a ‘get home’ bag or anything like that. It’s simply stuff I want to have around when I’m away from my house and that will give me advantages in a crisis. It’s basically a giant nylon Swiss Army Knife with shoulder straps. Whats in it? Geeze, thats a list but here’s some of it: FAK, TQ, ICOM R6, AM/FM radio, knives, TacTool, Glock, mags, holster, flashlights, spare batteries, ration bar, water filter, handcuffs, zip ties, writing equipment, hand sanitizer, matches, lighter, water bottle, multitool, paracord, etc, etc. MacGyver could build an aircraft carrier with all the stuff I have in there.

What gets used the most? FAK and flashlights. Never used? TQ and Glock. Some stuff changes out as the seasons change…like my Winter Module which is gloves, hat, mitts, etc. But just because I haven’t had to use something yet doesn’t mean that its not worth taking along. I try not to go overboard on what I throw in there, but I do want things that will give me ‘an unfair advantage’ in a crisis.

So there you have it…it doesn’t go everywhere, but it does go to work with me everyday. Interestingly, I’ve almost never had anyone at work ask me about it. I think they just assume that its got a laptop and other junk in there.

CostCo freeze dryer

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9

Ok, that caught me completely by surprise:

$2295 from the manufacturers website

I know from what I’ve seen on the internet that the oil pump system is annoying, messy, and kind of a pain. The optional non-oil pump system is rather expensive but if you offset it with the savings from getting this at CostCo….well, that might make it worthwhile.

But…heres the other thing: CostCo has a very generous return policy. So, perhaps after a while you may decide this product isn’t for you. Head back to CostCo, hand it back, and get your money back.

Hmmm…I have a large amount of freeze drieds already, but this would be interesting to experiment with. And I know enough local LMI that perhaps we could ‘group buy’ it and shuttle it around to our respective locations for use.

Also, how big could the market for this really be at CostCo? Perhaps if I’m patient I’ll see it marked down l50%~ like the LifeStraws. Maybe get it for under $1000 in a couple months.

Hmmmmm.