I had intended to do a 'Road to Clash of BritNerf' series but life over took me and client orders meant documenting and working on my own equipment took a back seat. Instead, here's a quick review of my equipment from the weekend. My full after action report can be found over on BritNerf while this post focuses on my equipment and load out.
Skirmish and Combat Order
This event proved the concept of Skirmish Order and Combat order beyond a shadow of a doubt. For the short games, it was great to have the full rig at respawn and just grabbing full mags from pouches and swapping them with empties. With any lulls in combat you can then top off from your drop pouch to keep your darts topped up.
I need to act on the notes I made in the last update about finding a better way to anchor them together. Currently the snap fastner and webbing approach is doing well but it does need a better way to do things.
Skirmish Belt Update
I've updated the skirmish belt to put an adjustable 50mm buckle directly on the panel rather than relying on the Velcro belt that's already there. It makes it easier to take the belt on and off if all the games in a given day are going to be short games. While threading it into the Viper belt remains an option, it's one I'd only use if I expected to wear the belt for long periods of time. I've sewn it in such a way that it's easy to revert back to the old method so I'll try it out at Invictus next month and see how it fares.
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| Adjustable 50mm belt closure on the Skirmish Belt |
You can also see in the photo where the changes to the magazines and dump pouch positions. Part of the dump pouch overlaps the magazine pouch and it works because the curvature of the body pulls the back of the dump pouch away from the mags.
A Gecko is coming to replace that Firestrike, too. With the Tempus out of action, however, there's little pressure to upgrade because the Gryphon can engage without needing an MED sicne it's clocking 135FPS at last chronograph.
Zip Dump Pouch Alterations:
I found the zip pouch was pulling away too much and at risk of spilling so I've added another pair of PALS legs with Velcro to the back of it. The joy of being on my reserve machine is that it has a shorter free arm which makes sewing things like this much, much easier. You just put the throat of the pouch into the short free arm and sew. It would be a much more difficult proposition with the flat deck of my main machine.
The pouch itself now fits at the 1 o'clock position just below the right hand set of magazine pouches in the full combat order which allows me to feed ammo with my off hand into magazines nicely and easily.
Friction Fit Magazine Pouches
My friction fit magazine pouches did a great job of keeping a small amount of ammo close to hand for short bouts. I have opted to move them off 1 o'clock position and down to the 3 o'clock. I found early on that kneeling or crouching with the battle belt secured around my Viper belt pushed magazine lips and my Firestrike into my ribs. In having it low, they were very accessible and stable but I had to move them further round in order to prevent problems with my legs interfering with them. It doesn't help that I've had to use an alternative supplier for press studs recently which means the PALS legs on the pouch don't secure as well as they have historically. At one point, the pouch came completely loose when I was crawling through a bush which is unprecedented. I've sent an angry email to the supply about quality and swapped the position of the dump pouch and mags accordingly. The other benefit to moving them to the 3 o'clock position is that they're now far more accessible when the full Combat Order is in use.
Bangers and... er... mash?
I built a specialised breaching bracer ahead of the invent to go on my right arm. The intended use was as a second mag in a stack to pancake against a wall and still be able to access 'nades, bangers and, if necessary, a lighter.
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| A 20mm piece of elastic to allow carriage of a MkV Thunderflash pyro |
It's not a bad piece of kit, all told but I didn't use it. The site was far too woodland and far too little buildings to warrant a specialised piece of gear for room clearance. For the most part, buildings were ignored and where they were in play, they were cleared using volume of fire and other traditional methods. The pouch consists of three pockets, two for my snap ring grenades (which produce a lovely bang and flash when they go off) and one for spare snaps and a lighter in the event I need one for the attached MkV Thunderflash, too.
I think I could make a small pouch for them to sit on the Skirmish Belt so I've got access to them all the time for lower density operations. For somewhere like Splatoon where easy access to bangers is more important, I'd probably use the bracer.
Honourable mention to the Enola Gaye Flash Grenade 3.0 that I got to lob courtesy of the game organisers at CoB. It was a lot of fun to have a WP40 sized pyro go off after 6s of having lobbed it into the netting above a building!
Elsewhere, my pyro game was strong. The 4 smoke pouch that I made for the Combat Order served brilliantly while good old fashioned MkI pockets did brilliantly for Skirmish Order. The DPM work shirt and trousers I use have big, useful pockets that take smokes quite nicely. I might consider a smoke pouch for the Skirmish Order but it's not exactly a priority. The haversack contained my spare pyro and ammo just fine.
Trouble in Gryphon Town
I had an outright failure that nearly put me completely out of action during Saturday. My Gryphon stopped firing for some reason and upon opening it up, it was discovered the printed gear on the pusher mech had failed.
Now, the Gryphon trigger throw is a great feeling but printed gears have made me nervous for a while. I was lucky enough that a fellow BritNerfer was kind enough to lend me a gear for future use but I'm adding spare PETG printed gears to my equipment load for future events. The pusher also needs more frequent cleaning because I found a lot of gunk building up in there which might have contributed to the problem. There is also a potential problem with the new AK Blaster Mod Talon magazines that I have procurred that I am currently looking into. I need to test them in other blasters before I draw any conclusions there.
I wanted to get the Tempus functional for this event but a problem has crept up with the electronics so I was back to the Gryphon. I'm hoping I can make the Gryphon settle properly with more effective maintenace protocols and not need to replace it with a Tempus but I am very, very ruthless when it comes to equipment failure.
First Aid Panel Updates:
My Leatherman Raptor shears turned out to be a surprise hit and unexpectedly useful tool across the weekend. I was amazed how much use they were and plenty of folks were asking to use them for all sorts of tasks. In turn, that moved my focus to how I carry. I found the slot I created for them in my original emergency to be unsatisfactory and they were at risk of falling out.
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| I lost a number of gloves from a very gappy glove pouch! |
In addition, the glove pouch that uses elastic is a bit floppy now after a few event's use so it needs remaking with Cordura access flaps like the one I built for my medic bag. I'd also like to be able to carry a proper trauma bandage with the pouch. I'll have a look at how I can achieve all of this with the same foot print and hopefully reuse some of the existing parts as I rework it rather than building something from scratch. I could also include a pouch for my Leatherman Blast multi-tool while I'm at it since that comes in pretty handy on the regular, too.
Helmet with power bank pouch
I finally got around to sewing my power bank pouch and attaching it to my helmet. That was great and all except I got to site and forgot that I put my camera batteries and power bank in my medic bag so when I turned my camera on and got no life from it, I assumed it was bust and left it alone. There was a lot of stress coming into the weekend so I think my brain was in "Ditch it mode" when it came to non-critical equipment. As a result, I have a helmet and power bank solution but no footage from the weekend.
Gloves and Knee Pads - Old Faithful Clings On
I urgently need to replace my gloves, the hole in the right one is getting silly now. At one point I put them on and my thumb popped through the hole rather than ending up in the glove. I could sew the seam back, yes but given the palms are worn smooth, it's time for an upgrade. My Alta Flex knee pads are still trucking and I've converted a couple of other players to them over the course of the last few months.
Boonie Hat, Cloaks and Staying Dry
In need of something lighter than the helmet for my Skirmish Order rig, I opted for a Boonie Hat like a number of other BritNerfers. It's a fantastic style of soft hat for lighter work and did a great job of keeping both sun and rain at bay. The best part, however, is the way the brim interacted with my cloak hood which meant the hood didn't come down when running. That's fantastic because it rained a lot but very intermittently. I opted for the cloak over the Goretex smock because the latter is much more difficult to rapidly change in and out of. The cloak can just be unclipped and dropped while the jacket needs to be removed from under webbing and belts. If the rain had been more consistent, I'd have opted for the jacket but we had very heavy downpours between sunny spells.
Communications:
Long Games are better with radios but they come with their own set of pitfalls and problems. I found a loose connection in my push to talk module so I ended up borrowing one radio to transmit with and the other to receive. Keeping a closed channel using the headset is vital because it prevents your location being disclosed from random noise. I would turn the transmission radio on whenever I needed to broadcast and promptly turn it back off.
Going forward, I plan to keep my UV5R radio on my Skirmish Belt for ready access and use the simpler 888 as the transmission radio. I can put the long aerial on it and feed it up the side of the haversack and have it receive accordingly. The UV5R can then go in hand where I can make better use of the greater feature range it offers. One of my consistent problems with radios is pouching them and not being able to get the best from them. By keeping the basic radio on the Combat Order for basic transmission and reception, I can use the UV5R for dual band work. I'm probably one of the few players in the Nerfing world who needs to worry about this sort of thing but documenting it for others isn't a bad shout.
