Custom SAR pack project: final touches, finished product

Ta-daaa.

It's done! Yay! I hate my sewing machine now, and my entire existence is permeated with little scraps of orange thread. However, I have a brand new, custom-to-my-specs, one-of-a-kind SAR pack. I'm kind of stoked.

Little did I know.

I got excited, dumped out my old SAR pack, and started loading stuff into the new one. It got...full. Fast. Turns out, I screwed my math up somewhere and made the main compartment too small; it's only 1,700 cubic inches (about 30 liters). My basic SAR kit fit, barely, but there was no room for extra stuff like a spare jacket, a stove, a harness, or anything else. And even without that stuff, the seams were a little....strained.

Thankfully, this capacity problem was easy enough to set straight. Rather than rip the whole thing apart and try to design a larger packbag, I just added a 4" deep pocket to the front, across the whole width and height of the pack. This bought me another 924 cubic inches, bringing the total pack capacity somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,600 cubic inches (42 liters), not including the small top pocket or the dedicated radio pouch on the left side. This seems to be a good size; anything bigger and I'd be tempted to carry too much crap, anything smaller and I wouldn't have enough room for all the stuff I actually do need, especially in winter.

Suspension

Radio pocket

 The radio I carry in SAR is a Motorola XTS 5000. It's huge. There is no good way to carry the thing on a vest or shoulder strap, so you end up carrying it attached to or inside your pack. However, the problem is that it becomes hard to access. On my old pack, I had a pouch for the radio, and five different little velcro loops to secure the cord. Took forever to pull the thing off.

To solve that problem, I added something that I think was rather clever. I stuck a separating zipper on it, like you'd see on a jacket, with the 'bottom' end at the top, where the pouch turns into a tube and opens up at my shoulder. This way, a teammate can partially unzip the pocket, leave the mic attached to my shoulder, and hand me the radio so I can make adjustments without having to drop my pack. Alternatively, I can unzip it all the way and remove the radio without having to mess around with anything but that one zipper.

radio pouch partly unzipped

I used a bit of bright green paracord for the pull tab on this zipper, so it's visibly different from any other zipper on my pack. This way, I can turn to a teammate and direct them to the appropriate zipper without confusion.

fully unzipped

mic end of pouch, showing mic retractor

As a side note, the rest of the zipper pulls on this pack are made by Osprey. I got introduced to these pull tabs (or loops, really) on my Argon 85 pack, and they are sweet. You wouldn't think one zipper pull would be much different from another, but these are the easiest to grab that I've ever used, even with bulky gloves on.

I wanted to get more of them, not only for this project but for jackets and other stuff. I contacted Osprey, looking to buy some, and they sent me a baker's dozen, for free, along with some buckles, strap adjusters, and other plastic hardware.

Top-notch customer service. Osprey is good people.

Osprey zipper pulls

 A couple other random details I wanted to highlight: the GPS pocket for the right shoulder strap turned out well. I used a piece of stiff 2" webbing folded in half to stiffen the opening, so it's much easier to insert and remove the device.

GPS pocket

GPS removed

pockets on left side of hipbelt, and caribiner

 On the left side of the hipbelt I attached a water bottle and my hard case for my sunglasses.

Right side - general utility pocket and additional caribiner

Hydration tubing port beside zipper

hipbelt buckle

I nicked the hipbelt design from Osprey. This allows you to pull forward to tighten the strap, which I find more comfortable than pulling back.

front of pack

So yeah. We'll see how it holds up to sustained use. I'm a little concerned about the longevity of the lightweight ripstop nylon that I used, but that's the price to be paid for reducing pack weight. This bag is a solid pound lighter than my old pack.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to think up a name. I mean, all the fancy gear companies have names for their packs. "Argon," "Baltoro," "Kestrel," "Nimbus," ect. I'm contemplating "Abomination," as a nod to Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International series. Any thoughts?