Review: First Tatical - Medium Duty Light

I did a "quickie-review" of the First Tactical - Medium Duty Light, which arrived in the mail a few moths ago, and was seen on Breach-Bang-Clear then, but I wanted to give it a bit more thorough a review, because it's come to be a reliable go-to light here in the bunker.

This is the aptly-named Medium Duty Light by First Tactical.

I usually use flashlights that are rechargeable directly, like my now defunct  HEXBright.

Sometime though, you just want some stock-standard batteries pulled out of old TV remotes, drumming bunnies or personal upper-thigh massagers. AA's are everywhere, and the MDL takes them.


Read the rest here on Breach Bang & Clear ...











https://youtu.be/3dYNRNNjcgY

Review: Back Country Cuisine - Cooked Breakfast

Here is the fourth and final chapter in my "instant meals" pieces that I've been covering. The first was the Outdoor Gourmet Butter Chicken, which was delicious, the Back Country Cuisine Roast Chicken which was passable, the Outdoor Gourmet Tandoori Chicken, which was also delicious and now the last entry of the four I had collected to sample, the Back Country Cuisine Cooked Breakfast.

Billed as a "satisfying beef bacon, scrambled egg in a hash brown potato mix served with baked beans" I wanted to have non-dinner one to try, to give a range of meal options in my mix, so it seemed like a simple enough addition.

As with the other three meals, the Cooked Breakfast consisted of a full meal, freeze-dried to preserve them, and make for a light-weight, portable and stable foodstuff. In the freeze drying process, crystals of frozen ice in the food are sublimed (evaporated) to water vapour in a vacuum chamber.

This produces a completely dry food that allows water to quickly get into the pores left by the ice crystals to give a juicy, tender food product when reconstituted. After packing, the Back Country Cuisine meals are heat-sealed in their foil pouches from which all the air has been removed and replaced with nitrogen. This keeps the food safe and "fresh" for at least three years without the need for preservatives.

The Cooked Breakfast meal weighs 90g dry, and requires 250mL of hot water, and comes with a second retort within the main pouch, which contains the haricot baked beans component of the meal. Once cooked, this is a 340g (12oz) meal, and again, it is quite possible to eat the whole meal in the bottom half of the retort, which comes with a "tear-here" notch for ease of use, to change it from a cook-pot into a bowl. Splitting the boiling water between the main component, and the beans, re-sealing and waiting for 10 minutes to reconstitute produces the meal.

Nutritionally, the meal provides 1702kJ (408Cal) as a unit, which breaks down to 501kJ (120Cal) per 100g, and equates to 20% or the recommended daily allowance.

However. This is probably the worst instant meal I have ever tasted. The egg was simultaneously stiff and spongy, and tasteless like foam. The bacon beef was not even TVP standard, the hashbrown mix was mush and the beans. The beans. The tasteless, white, sauceless beans didn't rehydrate, and were still hard and dry in the retort, and didn't further reconstitute with additional water.

This is one of my rare negative reviews. This was terrible. Not only that, but I became very ill shortly after eating it, and I had to go home from work following eating it early in the afternoon. I was sick for a couple of days. It wasn't even tasty. Sure, it might not have been the BCC Cooked Breakfast, but I'll not be having another one. So, 2:2, the OGC meals were 2/2 delicious, the BCC meals were one passable, one awful and sick-making. Certainly not what I would have wanted if I had been out bush, or living in the Bunker.

Review: SpifyLab - Sparky

FIRE FIRE FIRE. I do so like fire starters and other goodies, and I was intrigued when an electric firestarter came past my way. This was the next in the line from SpiffyLab, who were the minds behind the Tactical Sharpie Marker I covered a while back. This is certainly a design from the same lineage, and the two tools could certainly sit side by side and look like a set.

The Sparky by SpiffyLab is an electric firestarter, designed to ignite steel wool, and nothing else. The principle has been known for some time, with a small battery, anything from a AAA up to a D cell, or a 9V, and fine grade steel-wool, you can ignite the steel wool by running the charge through it, and the resistance to power ratio heats the wire up.

The Sparky uses two (2) AAA batteries to ignite steel wool. The 'Sparky' produces about 3.0-3.5 volts which is more than enough voltage to ignite steel wool or even a foil gum wrapper. It is designed with a twist cap, clip, knurled grips, and O-Rings to resist dirt and moisture in several spots. It is built with a tough, lightweight aluminium body, and a copper conductor tip.
It features a solid copper conductor tip, for optimal conductivity as next to silver, copper, is the most conductive metal. The aluminium body Sparky weighs in at just under 90g (3.1oz), with battery and the overall length is about 16cm (6.5") long and is 1.6cm (0.625") in diameter.

Interestingly, the Sparky is safe to touch and is vented. Even when exposed, the conductor tip and body can be touched without any harm coming to the user, due to the low power of the batteries, and the nature of skin conductivity. Just replace the cap when not in use to reduce accidental discharge.

So you might be continuing to ask "How can Sparky ignite steel?"

By touching the positive and negative "terminals" on the Sparky (the copper conductive tip, and the threaded aluminium body) to steel wool sends a current through the wool, and it heats up the fine "wires" because of resistance. The heated temperature causes the iron to react with the oxygen (O2) in the air and creates iron oxide (FeO2).


This reaction releases heat, heating up the next bit of iron and so on, causing a cascading reaction through the steel wool. It runs visibly through
the bundle of steel wool like a fuse, and as it burns through, you have your chance to use it to ignite your kindling, as you would with other firestarting methods.

As the makers point out, the science of this is pretty cool, even if a bit gimmicky. I managed to get the Sparkey to work easily enough, but getting it to catch on tinder was a little trickier, due to the nesting way the steel wool burns, keeping the burning steel away from tinder. However, it did work, after some fiddling. I expect it would work to ignite iron filings too, and probably work well to set thermite off as well (I didn't have any one hand to test ...).

Needing a very specific fuel to initiate the ignition, this is a pretty niche product, but, if you happened to want a low physical-effort firestarter, and have the capacity to store appropriately fine steel wool, this is an effective tool, especially if you had a surplus of AAA batteries not useful for anything else.

Re-bloging: on double sided daggers, axes and the art of utility.

DJ Urbanovsky, the knife and axe-maker extraordinaire behind American Kami has had some great successes recently, two more of his knives have been put into production by Boker (check them out here) . I have had  the pleasure of fooling around with a couple of the American Kami blades, in my tactical kitchen knife, the Super Colubris, and the Boker Mid-Tech Colubris which was part of a pass-around review.  He is a maker of fine, dangerous and finely crafted blades, and recently, he's been making daggers. Pondering these as he grinds, fits and finishes these, he had some thoughts, which he was good enough to share:


Since I am in the middle of assembling a ton of them as I type this, one of my thoughts on daggers: So, obviously most people tend to look at a dagger and think "That right there is some man-killing-as-shit," or that it is a single purpose design and good for nothing other than making holes in bad guys.


Read the rest of his thoughts here on Breach-Bang-Clear

Because there is always some window-licker that tells me I'm going to go to jail or some such:

Where I live, double bladed knives are listed as Prohibited Weapons.

In order to possess a dagger, a person would need to obtain either a:

• a Chief Commissioner’s Approval (CCP), or
  
• be covered by a Governor in Council exemption (GIC).
  To be eligible for a GIC a person must be able to demonstrate at the time of purchase, that they are a member of a club, group, organisations, or a class of person which has been granted a Governor in Council Exemption Order.

So, know your local laws, and collect, train with and use the tools that best meet your needs and applications. Thanks again to Mr Urbanovsky,and be sure to check out his work!

Review: Outdoor Gourmet - Tandoori Chicken

This is the third of the pre-packaged instant meals I wanted to cover, following on from the Back Country Roast Chicken, and the Outdoor Gourmet Butter Chicken camping meals and I wanted to go through them all. This is the Tandoori flavoured chicken, which comes with a yogurt sauce.

As with the Butter Chicken, and the Roast Chicken, the pouches are tear open and zip-lock sealable, in order to cook your meal in the same retort you then eat out of. The Tandoori chicken meal includes a sachet of yogurt sauce, which needs to be removed before the boiling water goes in, and is added following the 10 minute "cooking" stage.

There were a number of nice ingredients in the mix, making for a nice variety of textures and tastes in each mouthful, even though, in something that escaped me when I bought them, included red capsicum, which I'm mildly allergic to (but it didn't seem to have too bad an effect). The meals are listed as a 370g serving size, with a 190g net package weight (obviously this equates to the cups of boiled water that goes in).

With that serving size, you are getting 1830kJ (437kcal) from the meal, or at 100g as a reference you are getting 486kJ (116kcal) per 100g. It's a pretty filling meal, but you'd need to have several to make a full days nutrition, or even more than just these to make a complete meal in any given setting. But when you need a flavour filled, hot meal, especially after a long hike, or getting caught in inclement weather,  these might just be the ticket.

The Outdoor Gourmet Company gives a 3 year "best before" on all their products but also state it is safe to eat beyond that, provided it’s stored appropriately and the packaging remains sealed. These could easily sit in a bug-out-bag or in the camping-box of a vehicle for ages without any trouble. They aren't vacuum sealed, but have limited volume and it's no big deal.

Other types of dry food might only last a year or so, but because of their exceptionally low moisture content they handle higher storage temperatures better than most wet-pack meals & higher moisture content dehydrated product. They may need a couple of cups of water to fully rehydrate, but they are delicious.

The zip seal pouch makes rubbish disposal a breeze; you just toss in any other rubbish, roll it up, zip it closed and pop it in your pack.

Review: Gearlex Ear Clip

I wanted to upgrade my accessory carrying capacity without adding my weight, or adding to my magnetic signature. (I rarely go through metal detectors, but whenever I do, it's a bigger and bigger pain each time). I use ITW Grimloc's on a bunch of my bags and harnesses, which are good, but have a "pop-open" thresh-hold that I have had come open at inopportune times.  

I saw that Hornest SG was stocking a bioplastic carabiner that looked to be suiting my needs. These are the Gearlex Ear Carabiners.  These weather and chemical resistant clips are made from 62% renewable materials and ends up being 15% lighter than nylon materials and are reported to retain that toughness down to  -60oC, in case you are intending to go yomping in Vladivostok or Mawson Station.

At the broad top of the "ear" shapes, the clips feature a 1" webbing loop, with a split notch for feeding it into the location of your choice. 

Unlike the webing notch of the of the Grimloc, the Gearlex webbing loop is on the outside of the carabiner, not the inside. This frees up the internal area of the carabiner to give more space for attached objects, and adds freedom of movement. 

However, it makes me worry about how much of a load the clip can take. The large Ear clips are rated to a max of 78kg and the small to 60kg, which is vastly more than the Grimloc's 36kg break-point. I rather empirically tested it manually by pulling it looped through my webbing , and it held in place to the point of hurting my hand and with the stitching straining.

The gate of the carabiner is fitted with a dovetail locking mechanism which adds to the strength of the gate and is one of several locks now standard throughout the climbing world.  The inside, weight bearing rim of the carabiner is thicker, to distribute the load, but the back edges have a broad rib for stability and strength, without adding too much mass. 

The carabiners are clearly not climbing rated, and come with warnings not to be "load-bearing" but that said, for the strapping of accessories, like water bottles, dummy cords or even strapping on smaller packs to bigger packs, such as the Hill People Gear Runner's Bag, or the Zulu Nylon Gear CAOS admin pack or even perhaps a daypack, for those of us who pack like we're about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.  

Gearlex produce these in Black, Coyote and Ranger Green, and I got one of the clips in black, one in ranger green and a small one in Ranger Green as well, to give me some options when I am setting them up and using them, to match or contrast the gear they are attached to.


Not as hardy and load-bearing as an aluminium or steel climbing carabiner, bigger and more stable than a Grimloc, the Gearlex Ear Clips fill the niche between a light accessory clip and a heavy-duty carabiner.

Both have their places and uses, but for something in-between, you might find that the Gearlex clips, in big and small suits your needs.

Wish Lust: Anachrobellum war-outta-time shirts

I wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to the folks at www.anachrobellum.com who, in conjunction with the Knife-hand the World folks, have put some pretty stellar t-shirt designs together, incorporating some of my favourite things. Vikings, Samurai and Revolutionary War warfighters, fitted and kitted with modern wargear.

Here are the three shirts that are available now:

This is the Til Valhall shirt. It portrays what a modern Viking pipe-hitter might look like while servicing his enemies with cold steel and hot lead.

As you can see, this berserker is a little better equipped to wreak slaughter and carnage upon his foe than were his distant ancestors — though true to form he has transitioned from blaster to a bearded skull splitter to make a point. We’re pretty sure Gunnar Hamundarson and Egil Skallagrimsson would approve.
Sure, maybe they didn’t have frags and mags in the Fóstbræðra saga, but that’s the way Anachrobellum rolls…and for that matter, it’s the way most of you roll as you conquer your way to Valhöll.

Here is the second in their line, The Tactical Samurai.

Why the Samurai? Of all the warrior archetypes in the world, none is perhaps more recognizable than that of the Samurai. The word Samurai is derived at least in part from the word saburau, which means “to serve.” That’s fitting enough, particularly in the modern context and even more so with regard to how we regard the warrior ethos. There’s nothing wrong with a little ego in a fighting man, quite the contrary — but if that ego is not subordinated to some sense of the greater good (serving your country, serving your community, sticking up for those weaker than you), well, then…

This particular Samurai is carrying some things MInamoto Tametomo and Miyamoto Musashi wouldn’t recognize — Mk17, PEQ15, OSS Suppressor, S&S Precision Manta strobe and the like — but they’d understand the philosophy behind it.





















Lastly, Roger's Rangers are back in the Roger's Rangers Returned shirt from . The frontiersmen and scouts trained by Robert Rogers were asymmetrical warfare experts before there even was a Continental Army (and long before anyone coined the term Asymmetrical Warfare). Once the Continental Army was established, its original 10 Rifle Companies were veterans of Roger's Rangers.
Capt. Robert Rogers first recruited his men in 1775 to support the British Army during the French and Indian War, conducting recce operations, raiding and essentially becoming an iconic example of (truly) light infantry operations.

This is a storied unit of American military history. Indeed, Rogers Rules of Ranging are studied and quoted even today -- just take a look at the United States Army Ranger Handbook, numerous scholarly works about warfare and counterinsurgency manuals. As such, Anachrobellum believes this warrior archetype to be imminently suitable for many of today's armed citizens and uniformed professionals.

The original Roger's Rangers were obviously limited in their equipment and weaponry. Those of today have far more impressive tools -- this is why our Roger's Ranger Returned is rocking SKD PIG gloves, a MK17 with Elcan Spector and PEQ15 -- as well as assorted other gear and the mandatory tomahawk of course!


Pick one up at www.anachrobellum.com or find them on Instagram, @anachrobellum.

#warouttatime

On Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Anachrobellum/