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Posted: 6/8/2004 8:21:06 PM EDT
| When you buy gear(vests, packs, pouches, etc) what color or pattern do you generally get? Black? OD? Tan? Patterned camo? Just wondering how it pans out among everyone. |
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My first line(belt, holsters, pistol mags, cuff case, etc.) is black. It goes with everything including civilian garb. My second and third line(vest, packs, pouches for them) are OD green. It works in urban or wooded environment and looks sharp. I like solids. Coyote is sharp too, but we are more green than brown here in MO. |
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Most of my stuff is woodland camo, since I did more than a couple of active duty years in the army. Since leaving active duty, I have bought only OD gear. To me, if you get darker gear (OD, coyote, or woodland camo) then it is easier to hit it with some tan spray paint to lighten things up to match the environment. Spraying a darker color onto tan or 3-color desert camo doesn't turn out nearly as well. That said, I have found that the most effective conventional camo for mixed vegetation (including light and dark, thick and open spaces) is desert pants and a woodland shirt (or OD vest). It breaks up the large block of continuous camo covering a human body. The first people I saw doing this were the British SAS, and we tried it out here in Hawaii with huge success. As always, YMMV. -Randy |
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Living in Texas, I usually tend to go with an OD loadout, because it is pretty versatile with whatever I am wearing, weather it be a pair of khaki 5.11's and a polo, or woodland BDU's. I usually wear my OD loadout for reactive target training in a woodland enviroment where me and my buddies have a course setup down south from where I live, pretty close to College Station (near A&M for those of you outside of Texas). Other than that my other loadouts are usually black for more urban terrain and CQB type training. Mike The Proving Grounds |
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I like OD and Coyote. Coyote doesn't seem as well suited for Florida though, so it's all OD for me. There are so many shades of OD and all you need is a few wet or dirty spots and it becomes a pattern all it's own. As far as BDU's go, I like mixing them up as was already suggested. A camo top and OD pants works really well. What I like to do is to go out into your area with a friend and a camera (both stills and video if you have the ability). Try whatever patterns you like or think might work. Then look at the film. Did it "really" work as well as you hoped? This works for training/shooting too. I learn lots from watching myself make mistakes.  Stephen |
Speaking of which...... |
While I like OD, I prefer the traditional Tan/Brown that the army adopted when they got out of blue uniforms  I tend to mix things up, Coyote base vest with OD and Smoke pouches, same with packs, or vice versa. Never black, and woodland is frowned upon by work as its actually illegal to have anything woodland in most Latin American countries unless you are military. We follow that more or less as a sign of respet to the locals. |
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"I prefer OD, but my holster, belt, and thigh pistol pouches are black." Any particular reason why they are black when, I'm assuming, the rest of your gear is OD? I used to not care about my daily, concealable gear, but I'm trying to switch it all from black to OD too. Some of my gear is black and I have no choice in the matter (job reasons). Black might go with civilian clothing, but black usually sticks out and screams gun (like fanny packs...I hate those things). The OD or Coyote usually blends a bit better, IMO. Just my .02, Stephen |
The holster is black becuase I did not want a woodland or desert Safariland 6004. I would have prefered an OD holster, but Safariland does not make one. I normally wear Khaki, woodland, or OD pants, so the black belt and thigh pouch is really not an issue. |
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| Most of my stuff is OD, tan, and 3-color desert. The next setup is going to be black. It may not blend with my clothes very well and will probably make it a little more obvious., but a plate carrier with a bunch of mags on it is going to be pretty obvious no matter what color it is. |
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