I've been trying to avoid this for a long while as I knew that this would open up a whole new world of costs, but I've decided to start collecting NSW and MLCS gear to eventually create a Navy Seal impression.
At the moment I've got some RAID modded DCU's and a couple of pouches in MJK/Tan.
I've always liked Navy Seal equipment and as I knew that as soon as I started collecting it, it will take over everything else, I've been trying to avoid the temptation.
But no longer.
Just thinking about all the gear that I'm going to be adding onto my list is scary.
New boots.
Safariland 6004 for a P226 (which I don't even own yet)
Possibly going with an RRV which means all new pouches.
Possibly a new helmet, at the moment I'm thinking about a Protech and adding on a Wilcox mount. I'll probably change my mind.
Oh lord....
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Interceptor Body Armour
I finally managed to get myself a IBA vest (Interceptor Body Armour) last summer.
I've been after getting hold of an IBA for a long while now, It had to be in Woodland pattern camouflage. I've seen many of these on ebay and I've bid on lots of them, but most of the time the auction would get pulled stating that the IBA was a restricted item and not to be exported out of the States. This pissed me off to no end as I'd seen replica versions, like the one by Guarder and while the copy looked pretty decent and the colours in the camo were a good match, it just wouldn't cut it for me.
There had been lots of auctions where I had contact the seller to see if they would sell me the vest without the soft armour as this seemed to be the main problem with regards to exporting the vest, but no luck. I had one seller who was still wanting to charge over $200 USD plus shipping for the vest with no inserts.
But then I finally managed to get hold of one, from a US seller who had it for a really low price, I thought that there must be something wrong with it, but for the price I wasn't going to argue. Almost a month later the vest showed up, with two nice little pink paint splats on the bottom front on the vest. I was a bit annoyed at this and tried removing the paint. I managed to get most of it off and when I mounted pouches onto the vest the stains were covered, so I was ok with this in the end.
I originally bought this vest for skirmishing and haven't used it yet as i've been trying to build up the vest.
At the moment I have made soft armour inserts for the vest to bulk it out, hopefully I'll be able to get hold of genuine Kevlar soft inserts for the vest, but so far whenever they've come up on ebay I've not had the funds to get them.
I plan on adding a set of the Toy Soldier replica Plates to give the vest some decent shape and bulk. These are pretty easy to get hold of but are quite down on my wants list.
I've added a groin protector which has the Kevlar insert, I bought this a while back with a Collar attachment, unfortunately I don’t have the collar yoke for the vest, this is turning out to be more difficult to track down that the actual vest was itself, The main problem seems to be that the Kevlar is actually sown into the Collar and can’t be removed. I’ve seen lots of the Collar Yokes in UCP pattern, but at the moment I don’t have any ACU gear and I’m not planning on getting any for the immediate future, because when I do that will mean me spending a lot of cash of loads of new gear.
I’ve contacted a seller who has one of the Point Blank Collars in Woodland pattern, I’m waiting on them getting back to me, and then my vest will be mostly complete.
I’ve had the collar attachment for well over a year, that’s a year that it’s been sat at the bottom of one of my kit bags and it looks like it will finally get some use. However, again I don’t have any of the soft armour inserts for this, so I’ve had to resort to cutting up a kit mat to shape, I’ve never even seen anybody selling the insert so I’m not holding out much hope of obtaining one in the near future.
On top of the IBA I've added a Woodland pattern Fighting Load Carrier vest by SDS, I picked this up really cheaply and unfortunately the previous owner had taken a black marker to the US print on the shoulder, I've lightend up the ink as much as possible, but it still shows and is an annoyance.
I've loaded up the FLC with all Woodland pattern pouches.
On the front:
Triple Shingle pouch
2 Double M4 pouches by SDS
2 Double CQB M4 pouches by SDS
2 Frag pouches by SDS
Medical Pouch by SDS
On the back:
MBITR radio pouch by SDS
Canteen Pouch by SDS
Looking to add a Bianchi M12 holster onto this and two double 40mm pouches.
I had a M12 holster but the seller sent me one in Foilage Green instead of OD, so I'm on the look for a new one.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
SDS Load Bearing Vest
I bought a Load Bearing Vest by Speciality Defence Systems off a US based seller. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, because this was before I realised that I was becoming a collector, it was just something that I really wanted to buy and to own.
I chose this vest because I had bought a 12” 101st Airborne figure that had the LBV and I knew that was what I wanted. I bought it in Woodland M81 pattern. The vest replaces the old Y Yoke from the Alice system and attaches directly onto the pistol belt, there are 4 rifle mag pouches on the vest, two double mags and two single mag pouches and two grenade pouches. The pouches are slanted on either side in towards the body with a grenade pouch on each side of the vest. This adds another 6 M4 magazines onto the 6 that are normally held with two Alice Mag pouches and another 2 Frag’s onto your load.
The version that I bought had two black clips to fasten the front of the vest and draw ties at the rear on each side to tighten the vest. This can be worn on top of the old Interceptor or RBA vests and can be worn without armour for more recon type missions.
I've got an LC pistol belt with two Alice M16 pouches in OD, a repro Woodland Buttpack and using an SDS Woodland Sustainment pouch as a dump pouch.
I need to add a Bianchi M12 OD holster so that I can carry my Secondary on the belt and a First aid pouch. There was one on Ebay this week that I just missed out on. It was fully stocked and went for such a cheap price.
Compared to current Molle and Tactical Vests this is pretty prehistoric, but I still really like the design of the vest.
I ended up selling this on ebay because I was using it for airsoft skirmishing and had bought a nice shiny new vest that I was all impressed with, so I sold my LBV as I thought that i'd never use it again, then summer comes round and I'm playing woodland games in a plate carrier, sweating my ass off and realised that I needed some webbing instead of a chunky, heavy plate carrier for woodland games.
I've ended up buying a new LBV from the same seller, This one is the Enhanced LBV that instead of the body part being made of Woodland pattern nylon, its green mesh, so the vest is a lot lighter, but I preferred the look of my old vest and I had got it to just that right battered and tattered look, this one is all nice and new and shiny.
I'll end up buying another LBV, but this will be the older pattern and I'm looking for one that is really worn and faded.
I chose this vest because I had bought a 12” 101st Airborne figure that had the LBV and I knew that was what I wanted. I bought it in Woodland M81 pattern. The vest replaces the old Y Yoke from the Alice system and attaches directly onto the pistol belt, there are 4 rifle mag pouches on the vest, two double mags and two single mag pouches and two grenade pouches. The pouches are slanted on either side in towards the body with a grenade pouch on each side of the vest. This adds another 6 M4 magazines onto the 6 that are normally held with two Alice Mag pouches and another 2 Frag’s onto your load.
The version that I bought had two black clips to fasten the front of the vest and draw ties at the rear on each side to tighten the vest. This can be worn on top of the old Interceptor or RBA vests and can be worn without armour for more recon type missions.
I've got an LC pistol belt with two Alice M16 pouches in OD, a repro Woodland Buttpack and using an SDS Woodland Sustainment pouch as a dump pouch.
I need to add a Bianchi M12 OD holster so that I can carry my Secondary on the belt and a First aid pouch. There was one on Ebay this week that I just missed out on. It was fully stocked and went for such a cheap price.
Compared to current Molle and Tactical Vests this is pretty prehistoric, but I still really like the design of the vest.
I ended up selling this on ebay because I was using it for airsoft skirmishing and had bought a nice shiny new vest that I was all impressed with, so I sold my LBV as I thought that i'd never use it again, then summer comes round and I'm playing woodland games in a plate carrier, sweating my ass off and realised that I needed some webbing instead of a chunky, heavy plate carrier for woodland games.
I've ended up buying a new LBV from the same seller, This one is the Enhanced LBV that instead of the body part being made of Woodland pattern nylon, its green mesh, so the vest is a lot lighter, but I preferred the look of my old vest and I had got it to just that right battered and tattered look, this one is all nice and new and shiny.
I'll end up buying another LBV, but this will be the older pattern and I'm looking for one that is really worn and faded.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Somewhere to start
This is my little blog.
It's going to be about my Gear collection.
I've been collecting gear for a little over three years now and I can truly admit that it has become an obsession, an obsession that has driven my girlfriend mad with the amount of time that I spend on the internet, on different forums and ebay drooling over bits of kit.
I've been really into gear ever since I was a little boy, but I never really put two and two together to actually start collecting until only a couple of years ago when I bought a couple of the 12" figures by Dragon and Blue Box. I loved the gear that the figures had and loved the attention to detail. It got me back into noticing little bits when watching war movies and loving the design and thought that goes into each and every piece of gear and kit that is used.
I've always had an obsession with US forces kit and over the years it has gotten all consuming. Suffering from a mild case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder does not help in the case of a collector.
I'll never admit to being the most knowledgeble person when it comes to the gear, especially comms, but this is what i'm into. Some peoples collections make me sick, the amount of time, money and effort that they must have put in is incredible.
So my collection is not the most extensive, expensive or exciting that you might see about, but so far it’s taken me quite a while to amass all the bits that I have.
I will admit that there have been quite a few mistakes made when making purchases, some things that I bought as an impulse buy, instead of doing some decent research and some pieces that I have since sold and now regret.
The first ever bit of kit that I bought when I was still really young was a crappy OD webbing belt and canteen that I used to use for Army Cadets along with a really old respirator haversack that my Dad’s RAF buddy got me. I’ve probably still got these back at my parents house somewhere. I remember being 13 years old and in the Cadets, the thing that made me really jealous of some of the older cadets was that so many of them had their own webbing sets. I was never a big fan of British kit and always was more interested in US kit. Even at a young age I really wanted to get a full set of Alice webbing. So when I eventually started buying kit a couple of years ago this was one of my first purchases.
I'm really into collecting gear to do a USMC Force Recon impression. I love the way that the FSBE II gear looks, it's mostly out of my means at the moment, so I'm having to do with replica versions of the FSBE II kit, most of this is by Pantac or Flyye Industries. I would dearly love to be able to get all the original real steel kit, but I'm going to have to deal with what I can source and find for the time being.
My goal is to create a really detailed and accurate impression using replica equipment and to then replace as much as possible with the real pieces of kit.
It's not just HSLD gear that i'm into, I also really like plain grunt gear. One of my holy grails for a while was to obtain a Point Blank IBA in Woodland pattern. This I did a while back and now I'm in the process of adding little bits to it to make it look as good as I can.
With this blog i'm planning on posting up the kit that i've already got along with an explanation of how or why I got it and with any future purchases.
It's going to be about my Gear collection.
I've been collecting gear for a little over three years now and I can truly admit that it has become an obsession, an obsession that has driven my girlfriend mad with the amount of time that I spend on the internet, on different forums and ebay drooling over bits of kit.
I've been really into gear ever since I was a little boy, but I never really put two and two together to actually start collecting until only a couple of years ago when I bought a couple of the 12" figures by Dragon and Blue Box. I loved the gear that the figures had and loved the attention to detail. It got me back into noticing little bits when watching war movies and loving the design and thought that goes into each and every piece of gear and kit that is used.
I've always had an obsession with US forces kit and over the years it has gotten all consuming. Suffering from a mild case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder does not help in the case of a collector.
I'll never admit to being the most knowledgeble person when it comes to the gear, especially comms, but this is what i'm into. Some peoples collections make me sick, the amount of time, money and effort that they must have put in is incredible.
So my collection is not the most extensive, expensive or exciting that you might see about, but so far it’s taken me quite a while to amass all the bits that I have.
I will admit that there have been quite a few mistakes made when making purchases, some things that I bought as an impulse buy, instead of doing some decent research and some pieces that I have since sold and now regret.
The first ever bit of kit that I bought when I was still really young was a crappy OD webbing belt and canteen that I used to use for Army Cadets along with a really old respirator haversack that my Dad’s RAF buddy got me. I’ve probably still got these back at my parents house somewhere. I remember being 13 years old and in the Cadets, the thing that made me really jealous of some of the older cadets was that so many of them had their own webbing sets. I was never a big fan of British kit and always was more interested in US kit. Even at a young age I really wanted to get a full set of Alice webbing. So when I eventually started buying kit a couple of years ago this was one of my first purchases.
I'm really into collecting gear to do a USMC Force Recon impression. I love the way that the FSBE II gear looks, it's mostly out of my means at the moment, so I'm having to do with replica versions of the FSBE II kit, most of this is by Pantac or Flyye Industries. I would dearly love to be able to get all the original real steel kit, but I'm going to have to deal with what I can source and find for the time being.
My goal is to create a really detailed and accurate impression using replica equipment and to then replace as much as possible with the real pieces of kit.
It's not just HSLD gear that i'm into, I also really like plain grunt gear. One of my holy grails for a while was to obtain a Point Blank IBA in Woodland pattern. This I did a while back and now I'm in the process of adding little bits to it to make it look as good as I can.
With this blog i'm planning on posting up the kit that i've already got along with an explanation of how or why I got it and with any future purchases.
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