RFI: Change in pack design features over time?

[ganulv]

Stay away from the Goruck crap. It's all fad and hype, and for sure not worth the money, despite claims of being military-grade.

[…]

I think a Source Commander might be a better fit for you, though it does have a hip strap of some sort.

Thanks for the heads-up on the GoRucks and for pointing out the Source pack. I had missed that one. It actually looks like they are in the process of phasing out and in a model or two, maybe that’s why?

On second thought, you may be better off with an Eagle Yote pack. Quite a few folks I know love them, and they are built almost bombproof.

I actually bought one a few weeks ago and ended up sending it back. I really liked the features, but the one I got had been poorly assembled (the side pockets weren’t parallel, and not just by a little bit, either) and the framesheet bowed even without stuffing it full. A few weeks ago I read a post on another board where the guy was saying he felt like Eagle had really fallen off after they were acquired by ATK. The same post mentioned that FirstSpear was centered around folks who left Eagle after it became a subsidiary. That was part of what put me onto one of the packs I mentioned previously.

You could sew in a stowable day-glo panel with ease and make you more visible to hunters if you had to.

I was thinking of finding some International Orange shock cord and find a way to put it to use on whatever I end up buying. I try and always wear at least one piece of IO-colored clothing, and it’s only really a concern up here a few weeks of the year, anyway. (At least to me. One day last December I was at a trailhead and a fellow informed me that “it was shotgun deer season, you know.” I guess that’s a Northeastern-ism, I hadn’t ever heard it before, it’s just called shotgun season where I’m from. It was such a funny phrase to me that I couldn’t resist being a wiseass and I told him, “That’s cool, deer got no beef with me.” But I digress.)

ETA: It's an odd thing, pack design and marketing. Most "assault packs" are most certainly not, and a lot of "3-day" bags don't have the features that would suit the mission of such a pack.

I spent a ton of time last year wondering about the business of load carriage, and it wasn't until then that I learned of the true nature of a 3-day load. It's really simple enough, but doctrinally, three days was the maximum planning factor for airborne forces to hold ground before a relief element was expected to reach it, or other forms of resupply were worked out. I cannot pull up the reference at the moment, but the principle does have a foundation in deliberate thought.

How often do folks organize their load into 1st/2nd/3rd lines? The assault pack/three day pack kind of-sort of imperfectly encompasses that distinction, I wonder if the assault/3 day pack distinction supplanted it at some point for U.S. forces? (I get the impression that it didn’t for Commonwealth forces. For example, the Brits and Aussies seem to have webbing, rucks, and Bergans.)