alright homos, i purchased a new bit of kit recently and i used it in the field so I'm gonna give you the lowdown
this set of webbing was £150 from here:
https://www.kitmonster.co.uk/product_info.php/cPath/188/products_id/1956 and honestly, it improved my qol in the field so fucking much it's unreal
from left to right, here's what i stored in each pouch
first two are mag pouches, which held two easily. and I know what you're going to say, "only two?" the fact is that storing two mags with an easier mechanism to get in, in this case velcro, is far superior to storing three with a fiddly opening and closing. In total, i could store 8 mags for immediate access, which is more than enough for a firefight. Any more would be far too much for belt kit and would go into the rucksack, but usually 8 is the max given to us for training and we carry boxes of unloaded.
3rd pouch in, the first utility, i carried a water bottle, the 1litre issued kind. Perfect fit, but we'll talk a bit about water bottles later
4th pouch is where i stored my cooker, gas, lighters, compass, para cord and head torch
5th pouch is where i kept my cigarette tin, notepad and any misc small items i could need
6th pouch was again, an issued water bottle, but this one also included a metal mug. The mug was a very snug fit and did not allow easy access to the water bottle in it, but since i was carrying two this wasn't much of an issue. As water bottles depleted i swapped the mug to be with the empty water bottle, and vice versa. I started the ex keeping the water bottles in the 4th and 5th but i found that when i was running about they would bounce far too much to be comfortable, especially when they were full, so moving them to the pouches which were much closer to my hips was a stellar move
and lastly 7 and 8 held mags
The webbing set overall was a stellar purchase that improved my qol immensely. The issued pouches use a weird mechanism seen here:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/rMQAAOSwIw9ccUvc/s-l640.jpg which was fiddly to get into under a firefight. The velcro pouches made my mag changes so much slicker that the difference was unbelievable. I can recall countless times i was flailing about on my belt buckle not putting down suppressive fire because of the issued pouches. Velcro is the way forward
As for the actual belt part of the kit, the hip pad was a genuine improvement over my older kit, especially since i was carrying two water bottles which weighed the webbing down a lot, i had no issues with my webbing riding up or rubbing painfully against me like I've had in the past. The buckle is a bit strange however, it's nice that it's easily adjustable for comfort but occasionally the buckle did slip out after crawling around on the ground. Fortunately, it wasn't that much of a problem since the webbing fit me so well and i had actual weight in it it kept my body shape anyway, so as soon as i had 5 seconds i could put the buckle back in. I do rate the buckle though, since it's metal it won't break and I've had plastic buckles break on me once before, so I'll take 5 seconds of annoyance for it not being made of plastic
thank you for listening to my blog
