Arclight
SAR guy
Here's something I thought would be worth sharing: My backup equipment bag.
On our team, we don't have a specific list of things we're required to take at all times. Instead, we generally put our packs together once we know what our mission/assignment is going to be. Our team covers of lot of different terrain (San Bernardino County, CA), so we don't always know what to expect.
Over the years, I've noticed that certain things have a high potential for causing misery in the field if they fail or don't make it into your load-out. So I came up with this:
It's a small nylon bag. In it, I have:
-Spare Headlamp (Princeton Tec Byte, 2xAAA)
-Spare GPS (Garmin Gecko 101, 2xAAA)
-Spare Radio (Baofeng UV3r)
-Spare Compass
-Old pocket knife+fire starter on a lanyard
-Cotton balls soaked in antibiotic ointment (fire starter+can double for wound cleaning)
-Signal mirror
-Water purification tablets
-Spare pen+paper (Pilot mini-G2)
-Small tube of sunscreen
-Spare AAA batteries (6)
The common theme here is that all of these items are lightweight and inexpensive. I have better versions of pretty much everything already. But this case contains duplicates of the things I need the most. I've had radios fail before (battery went dead, got dropped, etc), I had my high-tech headlamp go down due to the battery wire freezing and cracking, and I've had to give up gear to others.
For these reasons, it's been really nice to have this in my bag at all times. It's not exactly a survival kit, though I will take it with me as-is when I go hiking outside of SAR. It's more of a minimalist set of what I need to operate effectively.
Would love to see comments or suggestions from other folks!
Arclight
On our team, we don't have a specific list of things we're required to take at all times. Instead, we generally put our packs together once we know what our mission/assignment is going to be. Our team covers of lot of different terrain (San Bernardino County, CA), so we don't always know what to expect.
Over the years, I've noticed that certain things have a high potential for causing misery in the field if they fail or don't make it into your load-out. So I came up with this:
It's a small nylon bag. In it, I have:
-Spare Headlamp (Princeton Tec Byte, 2xAAA)
-Spare GPS (Garmin Gecko 101, 2xAAA)
-Spare Radio (Baofeng UV3r)
-Spare Compass
-Old pocket knife+fire starter on a lanyard
-Cotton balls soaked in antibiotic ointment (fire starter+can double for wound cleaning)
-Signal mirror
-Water purification tablets
-Spare pen+paper (Pilot mini-G2)
-Small tube of sunscreen
-Spare AAA batteries (6)
The common theme here is that all of these items are lightweight and inexpensive. I have better versions of pretty much everything already. But this case contains duplicates of the things I need the most. I've had radios fail before (battery went dead, got dropped, etc), I had my high-tech headlamp go down due to the battery wire freezing and cracking, and I've had to give up gear to others.
For these reasons, it's been really nice to have this in my bag at all times. It's not exactly a survival kit, though I will take it with me as-is when I go hiking outside of SAR. It's more of a minimalist set of what I need to operate effectively.
Would love to see comments or suggestions from other folks!
Arclight
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