Skirmish Belt Prototype

 With only high FPS games running right now, my higher energy load out is getting a lot more attention. After Wickford on 8th May, I realised that a lot of my stuff is sitting far too high on my rig. The battle belt on the 18 pattern is sitting too high where it's locked to the haversack and there's a gap between that and my duty belt. It makes it too diffcult to access the ammo in the dump pouch or the pistol in the holster. I need something lower down to make it work.

Back in the mists of time. Well, March 2020 actually (remember a time before the plague? Yeah...) I had a LARP character that was basically a warrior diplomat that needed a bit more flexibility in his kit. I talked about it a little in this post. Then the battle belt sat below the vest as an auxilliary piece of equipment and the vest could be fitted over the top. The theory worked out very well in practice, I could have a light to medium load out for 'everyday' carry as well as a heavy load for when we were really bringing the thunder. It also worked really well in character because, as a diplomat, you can change up your kit depending on the message you want to send. Sitting down and taking tea with a local tribal chief? Battle belt gets hung on the door peg. Intimidating said locals into fighting with you? Full body armour and combat helmet.

Now, I could have created another battle belt and indeed the end product is probably interchangeable with a battle belt but I wanted to experiment. The battle belt I sewed for the character was a clone of the Condor model because I couldn't get that one in DPM.The issue with that design is that it's very involved and doesn't scale well for production. It has multiple layers of fabric and while it's a solid design, it's not one I want to be repeating. I got talking to another BritNerfer who was looking at rigging belts and the option of a very slimmed down battle belt.

Now, a battle belt has to serve two functions. The first is to carry equipment and the second it to carry in a fashion that is more stable than a duty belt on it's own. With a rigid enough belt, it's possible to just layer another belt over the top and you're good to go. However, that can be uncomfortable and will still allow a degree of lateral movement in the belt itself.

Enter the skirmish belt - so called because it's lighter than a battle belt.

This design uses the same amount of fabric as my flap top magazine pouches at 800x110mm but does have a mesh liner for comfort. I made two prototypes, one with a closed cell foam stiffener and another without. I've not noticed much difference between the two in the testing I've done around the flat, the duty belt over the top is doing plenty as a stiffener.

Philbert hasn't put on a lock down chonk...

The dummy has a wider waist than mine so you can see what less coverage equalling more bending will do for you. I've sewn a 50mm duty belt for this but any Viper or similar belt would do the trick.

Closer view of the interface between the belt and the pouches

The construction is very simple and you can use any 50mm belt to anchor it in place with the provided loops or any MOLLE mounted pouches you've got on there. The other great thing about this design is that it can be shortened or extended to the player's preference. I cut this to 800mm because my waist is 920mm which leaves 50mm for the buckle and 20mm 'give' room. If I were smaller or wanted less coverage, I could trim the panel and make a smaller one. As it was, I thought this might end up serving as the main panel for my full service rig so I made it full coverage. That way, the lesser coverage on the battle belt can be exploited to make a more bending-over-friendly lighter load.

The main sticking point with construction is the MOLLE. It takes time to measure and sew that set of panels so I suspect a typical 800mm belt will cost around £30 with an additional £5 if you want a belt supplied with it.

I'm going to swap the skirmish and battle belts over and see if there's a big difference between the two.