SOD Gear Operative Field Parka Review

 Initial Review

                I’ve been looking recently for a good jacket/concealment garment to wear year round in Virginia.  The un-tactical tactical vest is a bit passé to me (not quite so much as the fanny pack, but I digress), so I tried to look other directions.  My criteria were simple:

• Wearable in a variety of weather conditions, from summer heat to winter cold.
• Suitable for service as a windbreaker, with water-resistant properties.
• Capable of concealing my firearm (Glock 19 at the time).
• Capable of carrying a load, ie, blowout kit, small survival kit, magazines, cell phones, or water.

Most civilian jackets that I researched seemed sole-purpose, designed solely for warmth or keeping the wearer dry.  Pockets seemed to be ancillary, designed to warm hands or hold keys.   I’ve always been a fan of smocks, probably for nostalgic reasons, but as I researched their history and intent, I realized that they have uses in civilian life as well as their original military purposes (covered here).

                This is actually the third smock I’ve owned.  I previously had a SORD USA smock, which I sold due to some disappointments with quality and the country of origin.  I currently own a DropZone Tactical in Multicam, which I utilize as part of my cold weather layering system at work.  I had considered a DropZone smock for my civilian wear as well, but was not a huge fan of the twill they use for their non-camouflage colors, believing it too heavy for year-round wear.  After much research, I found the Italian company SOD Gear, the only manufacturer I could find that advertises non-camouflage jackets in the same 50/50 NYCO ripstop that they make their camouflage patterns in.  Knowing that smocks typically fit a little larger, I communicated with them through their Facebook account.  Despite a little bit of a language barrier, they were very glad to talk me through selecting a jacket.  I ordered online, and received the jacket within a week via DHL.

                My initial impression is that this is a very well-made jacket, with enough pockets to fulfill my every need.  There are 14 external pockets and two internal pockets.  By location, the jacket has:

·         Two zipper pockets on the upper arms,

·         Two zipper pockets on the lower arms,

·         Two button pockets on the chest, with

·         Two zipper pockets behind the button chest pockets,

·         Two button pockets on the lower front,

·         Two button pockets on the sides,

·         One large button pocket on the lower back, with additional zipper access, and

·         Two internal zipper pockets on the upper chest.

The hood has two drawstring adjustments, and the waist and hem have drawstrings as well.  The cuffs are   Buttons are NATO style, with fabric strips securing them to the jacket.  Fabric is 50/50 NYCO, with a tight enough weave to block the wind and provide light water resistance.  The jacket is cut roomy, allowing for another layer for warmth underneath (I’ve fit both the Army’s new Gen III Layer III and a Mountain Hardwear Monkey Man jacket underneath).

Velcro adjusted, and the front is zipper closed with a button wind fly.

I’ve carried a lot of stuff in it (probably too much at times).  I’ve carried blow-out kit (my full size one, not the one from the EDC pics), my S&W 442, survival kit, keys, phone, and wallet.  Oh, and I concealed my Glock underneath.  Overall, I’m very pleased with the jacket, and as the weather gets colder, I’ll probably go back to wearing it daily.  It makes a great windbreaker during the fall, and with the Mountain Hardwear underneath, it’ll keep even a biting wind in the 40 degree range off your core.

-Woody

Chest pocket showing taped button and fold over pocket

Rear pocket showing top and left side access

Chest pocket showing zipper pocket behind button pocket

Arm pocket with hook and loop patch

Lower sleeve pocket

Elbow reinforcement and pad pocket

Mesh underarm vent

Upcoming posts...

Right now I have scheduled for posting:

A review of the SOD Gear smock
A review of the DropZone Tactical smock
A review of the High Speed Gear Armordilla, Upstate Tactical/G-Code Modular Velcro Panel, and G-Code OSH holster as a system
A review of the Old Faithful IWB holster
A review of the American Kami/Boker Colubris knife
My opinions on firearms training in America (sure to stir some controversy)

Anything you guys would like to see?  Please keep in mind, I only review things I have actually used, and no one sends me free stuff, unlike the other blogs (hence my GoFundMe account), so if possible, keep your suggestions practical (inexpensive helps).

Help me build my blog

Help me build my blog (and my skills) by sending me to a Kyle Defoor class!  I will purchase any required gear in the PenCott family of patterns and from US manufacturers as much as possible.  The course, and all gear utilized, will be reviewed on this blog.  If you enjoy my posts and find them useful, this is a way to get more!  If for some reason, I can't attend the Kyle Defoor class (gear doesn't arrive, class gets full, etc), I will attend a similar class with the same conditions.

If you want to see this happen, click here to send me to the class.

Class link http://aliastraining.com/kyledefoor2-daypistolandcarbine-nov9-102013virginiabeachva.aspx
- Woody

Lessons learned from a natural disaster

The desk I was at when it hit, and the door I spent the quake in

In January of 2010, I was sitting in my room in the Hotel Caribe, Port-Au-Prince, Haiti sipping on a Coke.  Haiti hadn’t experienced an earthquake in over 50 years, and all the risk assessments my team had done prior to our arrival had indicated that the greatest danger to us was from street crime or riots.  My team had personal cell phones, and an Embassy-issued radio on the net operated by Post One.  I won’t go into details concerning the quake, as a Google search can provide you with that information, but I would like to share several things I learned:

The rest of my room and the door to the bathroom

Lesson 1.  Have a plan, practice it as much as you can, and don’t count on someone coming to save you.  Emergency services in a catastrophic event (those that aren’t affected by the event) will be focused on the most severe injuries or most severely damaged areas.  My team was required to submit a mission plan that included procedures for what to do in an emergency.  To be honest, I didn’t do the best job of sitting down and thinking about what could happen.  I blame it on personal complacency.  By this point, I had completed 2.5 years of mobile training teams on 5 continents.  Nothing had ever happened, and I was in the mindset that nothing ever would.  My plan for everything was the same: call the Embassy.  When the earthquake hit, the initial panic and injuries among personnel resulted in Post One having to assume control of the net and regulating traffic.  If you weren’t severely injured, you weren’t getting through.  We had a vehicle, but didn’t know how to get to the Embassy, and we didn’t have a map.  We also had no weapons.  If you read the news, you know that you don’t necessarily wander around certain parts of Haiti during normal daylight hours, much less when all security and social services just disappeared.

Lesson 2. Know your equipment and how to use it.  My team was issued a medical kit from Adventure Medical Kits, designed to treat everything from a hot spot to a gunshot wound.  Nobody on my team, myself included, had ever opened the kit to actually see what was in it, or read the field medicine guide that it contained.  My team also had Ultimate Survival Kits in a bottle.  Like the medical kit, we had never opened those kits, and we found ourselves digging through them in the dark trying to find the batteries to put in our flashlights.  Our satellite phone required a password to use, and we had rarely used it outside of checking to see if the battery was charged.  Under stress, the password was forgotten, and we ended up locking the phone out.

Lesson 3. Be prepared for a total communications failure.  Due to the massive damage to the infrastructure, all cell phone service was lost.  We locked out our satellite phone in the chaos, and the radio network was jammed with people needing assistance.  The military teaches you to plan for a primary, secondary, and tertiary method of communications.  We lost all three in a matter of minutes.  During another natural disaster, Hurricane Rita, I was in Houston for the evacuation.  As over 3 million people attempted to leave the city, all cell phone communication went down.  The only comms that would go through were burst comms such as text or the old Sprint push-to-talk phones.  And this happened before the hurricane even came ashore.

The hallway outside my room

Lesson 4. Stay calm.  I know this sounds a little ridiculous, because you’ve been told this a thousand times.  I can tell you that it is imperative, and a lot harder than it sounds.  Once the world stopped shaking, the only thing I could think about was getting us out of the hotel.  There were two exits from the hallway, one into the lobby, and one into a stairwell.  The exit into the lobby was partially blocked by fallen debris, including what appeared to be electrical wiring.  The exit toward the stairs was only slightly better.  I was preparing to head down the hall toward the stairs when one of my guys pointed out that we were only on the second floor, each room had a balcony, and there was a landscaping feature that reduced our drop from the balcony to less than 5 feet.  That little fact made our exit significantly safer, not to mention easier.  After we realized that we weren’t trapped, it made it a little easier to calm down, which allowed us to prioritize the equipment we needed to take with us.  We initially escaped with our med kit, survival kits, water, some snacks, and our sat phone.  As the evening wore on, we eventually had to go back to get some clothing to share with other hotel guests, but our initial evacuation left the three of us pretty equipped to make it through at least the night.

Looking back, there were many things I could have done differently, and even though my event occurred hundreds of miles from home, it has application here as well.  First, know the threats – be they hurricane, tornado, earthquake, etc.  Make a disaster plan.  Make your disaster preps.  FEMA has several resources at www.ready.gov.  Get together with your neighbors and incorporate them into your disaster plan.  One of my biggest pet peeves is watching Doomsday Preppers and listening to them talk about how they have prepared and they’re going to watch as everyone else who didn’t prep suffers.   Golden Rule aside, that’s not a good plan.  Almost no single person, or even single family, is going to survive very long in a disaster by themselves.  Make sure you include trustworthy people with needed skills (Ham radio, medical, security) in your planning, and practice operational security with people outside your circle.

Hopefully this has been useful to you, and my mistakes can help you be more prepared.

New VZ grips

Aliens in Hyena Brown.  VZs are my favorite grips by far.  I have them on several guns, I've used them for carry, and I really think they offer the best purchase on the firearm without jacking up my hands or my side while I carry.

12 years ago today...

I was walking to Macroeconomics class.  When I arrived, someone said they had heard a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  I remember thinking "What kind of lousy pilot can't see a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan?"  Other cadets wanted to turn on the TV in the classroom to watch the news, but the instructor wouldn't let us because he wanted to get on with the class.  After I returned to my company area, I saw messages written on our company whiteboard - "Bomb explodes outside State Department," "Pentagon attacked," "All airplanes grounded."  The news in those first chaotic hours was filled with rumors, many of which later proved false.  My fellow cadets, all 100 of us, crammed into a room designed for  1/5 of that capacity, glued to the TV as we watched the tragedy unfold.  Several of the cadets had family in Manhattan, one had a father stationed at the Pentagon.  As news slowly trickled in, they began to get word that their families were safe.  Services and moments of silence were held that night.  Taps played every night at the Academy at 2200, but it had a special meaning that night.  Tradition held that anyone in the passageway froze during Taps, so many cadets would normally rush to be in their rooms before it began playing.  That night, I watched as every cadet in the company stepped into the passageway at the first note.  We all knew that fundamentally, something had changed. 

Belts - the foundation of EDC

As I'm sure you've heard in many blog articles/websites/books, you really do have to dress for concealed carry.  Massad Ayoob has an excellent section on this in his book "The Gun Digest Book of Concealed Carry," and one of the articles of clothing he mentions is a belt.  The reason for this should be fairly obvious.  Aside from your holster, the single most important piece of gear for keeping your firearm properly secured on your person is your belt.  I would personally consider it every bit as important as the holster.  Think of them as a complimentary system.  Spending a lot of money on one while neglecting the other can easily lead to a failure of the system to perform as required, IE., a $100+ holster hanging from a cheap Wally World belt is going to sag and shift, at the very least becoming annoying, and at the worst allowing your firearm to move out of position (or fail), causing your firearm not be where it needs to be when you need it.  Don't even get me started on the guy I saw carrying a $1k pistol in a Wally World holster hanging from a cheap cotton belt that probably came with the shorts he was wearing. 

For my needs, I utilize two different belts: the Line One Belt from First Spear, and a Bianchi Fancy Stitched Leather Belt.  I purchased the Line One Belt after seeing it online, and utilized it to carry my Raven Concealment holster and mag pouch for a Glock 19/TLR-1 combo.  The Bianchi normally supports my Colt Lightweight Commander in a Fobus (I'm still waiting on my G-Code).

A little about the belts:

The First Spear belt is urethane coated nylon, and is 1.5 inches wide.  You get your choice of black or tan (and everyone knows everything is cooler in tan).  A major advantage of this particular belt is that because of the urethane, it is virtually impervious to the elements and the age old issue of leather stretch.  It also requires very little upkeep.  It looks good, and from a normal contact distance, looks like a standard pants belt.  The price is also slightly cheaper than most quality leather belts.  The downside is that this belt is normal belt thickness (approx 1/8").  It hasn't been an issue for me so far, but with a higher ride holster or a heavier gun, it could be prone to cant.

As the name implies, the Bianchi is brown leather with a stitched pattern, and is 1.75 inches wide.  This has become my go-to belt.  When paired with my Lightweight Commander, I never have to worry about my firearm moving or sagging.  I actually bought the belt on the recommendation of a prior-service SEAL who had done PSD work and told me that his unit had issued the belts to them, and had never had an issue supporting their Sigs.  The Bianchi is a little thicker than the First Spear (approx 3/16"), and between the extra thickness and width, provides a very stable platform for mounting a holster.  On the downside, it is leather, it will require minor upkeep, and it will eventually stretch and need to be replaced.  I don't consider this a major disadvantage, as nothing lasts forever, and just like you will eventually probably have to replace your holster (if you use leather), you will eventually have to replace this belt.  It is a bit pricier than the First Spear, but after wearing it for the last few months, I consider the extra money worth it.  The only annoying item I have found is that not all my pants have belt loops that are friendly to this width belt.  It's something I will have to watch for as I buy new pants.

Overall, I prefer the Bianchi for its stability, and let's be honest, in a world of constant tactical nylon bombardment, there is still something enduring about good old fashioned leather.

-Woody