My new bag.

So, this Thanksgiving, my family did an early Christmas due to the fact that my in-laws would be out of town for December. As a result, I got my gifts early this year.

the one I really want to talk about is my new bag. Wal*Mart is (or maybe was, by now) selling the Fieldline Tactical ROE bag (which is a low cost clone of the Maxpedition Sitka Gearslinger bag) I've had my eye on the bag for a while because of how it works. By rotating the bag around to your front, you can access it all without having to take the bag off. I found the concept novel, and wanted to see if I could take my EDC kit and transfer it to one of these bags.

The bag is actually smaller than my old one, but more soundly built. The face and sides are lined with MOLLE/PALS webbing, allowing for the attachments you see here, namely the red, blue and yellow bags.

The point of EDC ( every-day carry) is to have a reasonable mix of what you know you will need on a daily basis, and what you will likely make good use of during the unforseen.

Now, lets get a few things out of the way up front, the ROE bag is a small bag for a lot of small items. This isn't a military filed bag, and never wants to be. The primary reason I have the red external pouch on it is so that I can have my Individual First Aid Kit on hand, and in something I can detach if I want to leave it behind for some reason. also, their are times where I might want to have the IFAK on hand and not the bag itself.

So, lets get down the the nuts and bolts, shall we?

Starting with the IFAK itself, as you can see I pretty much have the old girl loaded to bear. More or less, I intend to be able to address most medical incidents from minor cuts and scrapes all the way up to a major laceration or puncture wound.

This is actually a cool little slot called a "torches layer". It fits a flashlight and that is held in place with shock cord. iuts actually a nice little setup.

This is the pocket right under the IFAK. Right now, it doesn't have much and I'm sort of looking to see what I want to put it there. At the moment it has my emergency whistle, my extra carabeaners and my thumb drive and so-forth.

This is the head pocket at the top of the bag, right under the flashlight. Here we have hand sanitizer, Aspirin, Tylenol, my camping spoon/fork/knife, chapstick, matches and a lighter.







The main pocket!

Now, you have to understand, this is what it would look like if I were wearing it and has it pulled around in front of it. I look down and this is what I would see. There are two mesh pockets in the middle there, and the one on the left has my pens and writing tools, and the one on the left has my folding mirror, with more hand-tools and such to follow.

The space isn't vast but its good for a lot of small things, but not any large ones. The subdivision is good for keeping those things accessible and easy to keep track of.

The small bag you see inside the main flap above has a lot of odds and ends in it, mostly computer and small mechanical tools that I have used in the past and are worth keeping on hand.

This is the same pocket, but with the notebooks pulled up so you can see the pocket where my kindle fits in (its turned out so you can see it better).












The yellow bag on the side is mostly my "flaps and straps" bag. I have my 50' of para-cord in there, the locks for it, one of my red straps, and at the bottom of the bag is my compass (just because I didn't have any other place to reasonable put it)







All told, I'm happy with it. It definitely takes some getting used to, but I like the organisation, the size and the fact that I don't have to take it off to get to the contents, a major complain I had with my old bag. If someone asked me for something, I had to take it off, kneel down, and usually unpack half of the bag to get to what I needed. With this... flip it around and "bam", it's there.