Alone, AFAIK, among makers of tactical gear, Condor makes a spiffy pouch, above.
For them, it's their MA-40 H2O pouch, intended for a water bottle.
What it really is, is a great catch-all for a lot of things. The front pocket more than doubles the utility.
With a liter bottle plus a survival kit in the pouch, it's a pretty good get home kit anywhere, anytime. Swap the survival kit for jerky and powerbars, and it's a 1/2-1 day ration carrier. It'll also hold a Katadyn Cadillac-level Pocket water filter, and you could put a lot of purification tabs in the accessory pouch. The uses are limited only by your imagination and experimentation, and the physics of what can be crammed into it.
Today I want to pass along a great medical use, for those who can take advantage of it.
As it happens, the main compartment is the perfect size to hold 500 or 1000ml bags of IV fluid. It protects them in transit, while making them easy to access quickly, and you can, as I have done, strap three to six on one or both sides of a range bag first aid kit, and have the means for fluid therapy/resuscitation for a number of casualties.
What makes it even handier is that the side pouch will hold a full IV start kit, a full set of IV admin tubing, and an assortment of IV catheters, such that you could pack it all in a ziplok baggie, and in a pinch, pass out a fluid bag and start kit to multiple people simultaneously.
They didn't build it for this, but for me, seeing it, the use is a no-brainer.
If you can take advantage of it, you should.
As always, remember, gear is only one step.
It takes Gear + Training to equal Preparedness.
15 comments:
Good tip, will definitely pick up a few of these. However if you have time what would be very helpful is:
1: your recommendation on the best site to pickup iv kits & catheters. Just curious if you have a good source.
And
2: a good site for the iv saline bags? Lact ringers appear not feasible due to prescrip regs, but even saline is difficult for reasons not clear to me other than the PTB don't want common folk to have them.
They're all Rx items. You can try vet supply places, but they've gotten wise to the deal too, and most require a scrip from a vet.
Condor Outdoor imports (china) almost all of their gear. Much of their product is sub-par and none of it is mil spec. Maybe the small pouches, but any load bearing gear I'd buy elsewhere.
Almost everybody else imports their gear too.
If I was doing HALO jumps at altitude, and Uncle was buying my kit, I'd let him buy me gold-plated Blackhawk and Tactical Tailor gear for 3-10x the price (which, in a just universe, would include a Playmate of the Month and sexual favors as part of the package). But the reality is it's all coming out of my after-tax income, no Playmates shipped, and there is such a thing as "good enough".
FWIW, I also humped Condor's gear (and VooDoo's) for about six years, 3-5 days a week, on the border in CA & AZ; the only problem I had in that time was a zipper on a med bag that was buggered from the get-go (I just replaced the bag), and an internal pocket fail on a ruck (with stupid heavy loads), which had no effect on doing its primary job. The rest is still serviceable after more time in the field than I did in a tour-plus in the Corps several presidents ago.
I beat hell out of it without a glitch.
Let's all try to remember that mil-spec is still a lowest-bidder game, and running a sewing machine isn't a uniquely American skillset. Other militaries field some serviceable gear too. While foreign zippers can be problematic, the beauty of MOLLE is that everything is threaded in so that even if the snaps fail, the pouch stays on.
And as I noted, Condor is the only maker I've found that makes that piece of kit.
Anybody who doesn't need it is free to not buy it.
It's not like I'm getting anything for recommending it besides passing on info about the utility of the gear.
these guys make a pouch very close to that as well. http://www.onetigris.com/product/onetigris-tactical-water-bottle-pouch/
Looks comparable.
As long as they're making stuff for serious use, rather than Airsoft, it should do fine as well.
It also makes them about the nineteenth company to say "I am Spartacus", but if they can carve out a market in spite of that, more power to 'em.
No matter what you use to carry gear have a speedy stitcher,about 12 bucks on the big e,comes with heavy thread.I have zero tailor/stitching skills yet was out of it's box able to sew up me favorite tool belt/repair handles on gear bags and packs I use in the carpentry trade.I am a idiot,always over stuff/fill bigs beyond reasonable capacity though am getting better about it and have punished them badly,they now are all in good working shape.My stitching is not pretty but followed what a sail maker does using the speedy for small repairs/retros and thus the stitching tough and solid.I would say a must have tool for any one with gear bags/molles ect.,takes up little space and is now always when hiking in my hiking molle,a very well spent 12 bucks.
Nice tip.
I'm partial to Shoe Goo myself.
I've sewn entire garments with it, and it those seams (and its intended purpose) outlast the garments/shoes it's used to repair.
But I'm fine with the belt and suspenders approach, and using both the cement and the hand stitcher, on general principles.
Use it up,
wear it out;
make it do,
or do without.
All good tips herein. Per Geo. M. Cohan:
"Ladies and gentlemen, my mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you!"
I get IV start/admin sets from shopmedvet, placed multiple orders with them and never a problem (or Rx required). Decent prices, and sometimes good sales on closeout items. Their IV fluids do require a Rx however.
Might try HealthPX.com for IV fluids without a Rx, that's where I got NS last and no complaints. Exp date 1 year out.
Thanks for the info.
In most (nota bene not all, tetracycline antibiotics being one obvious example) cases, "expiration dates" on meds are a fiction for the convenience of manufacturers' sales figures, in return for supplying pharmaceuticals to the .Gov/DoD at cost.
No bonus points for figuring exactly what's inside a sterile sealed plastic IV bag of 0.9% saline 10 years after the "expiration" date.
Due diligence, and caveat emptor, folks.
Maxpedition also makes one they call their 10x4 pouch.
https://www.maxpedition.com/products/10-x-4-bottle-holder?variant=27894134289
I have both the Condor and the Maxped. I'd give a slight edge to the quality of the Maxpedition based on the thickness of the fabric and overall construction.
Maxpedition also has a larger size called the 12x5.
https://www.maxpedition.com/products/12-x-5-bottle-holder?variant=27894164305
I can fit a Nalgene Backpacker stainless water bottle, plus a Stanley cook set (minus the two cups) and a GSI stainless cup all nested inside the Condor pouch main compartment. Nice item to have!
Tetracycline antibiotics (as a class) don't turn toxic on expiration, or at least not with current formulations of the tablet/capsule form of the drugs. Tetracycline itself was tested in the Shelf Life Extension Project and found to still be usable up to 133 months following the expiration date. See
"Stability Profiles of Drug Products Extended beyond Labeled Expiration Dates" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16721796 But don't spend $35 for the pdf report there though, you can read it for free via http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ (search under scientific articles).
I don't know how good their supplies are, but I just ordered some Israeli bandages through amazon and they were shipped directly from Israeli First Aid (israelifirstaid dot com). There is a LOT of stuff on their web site.
This looks like a great piece o gear,I'm gonna look right into it. Our Docs used to put sets into the open cover bag between that and the IV bad itself. Alternatively we got issued our IV sets using the ubiquitous Seal-A-Meal to package them.
Bravo on the Speedy Sticher too; haven't used shoe-goo in forever but oughtta look at it again.
Dunno as I'd consider Blackhawk "gold-plated" I used a bunch of their stuff early-on; went through several iterations of the early "three-day" packs and just got tired of all their BS.
There is a company making good stuff in USA (though they have a line of stuff made overseas too and that's SOTech. Full Disclosure; I served briefly with Jim Cragg, the owner but haven't seen/spoken to the lad in about a decade. I don't get anything from him/them; I have bought several pieces of their gear in the intervening years and have been very happy with it. Their stuff is NOT inexpensive but it's proven to be really good.
Great points on expiration dates and such; I'm fortunate in that my GP will write scrips when I need them.
Boat Guy
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