Greetings and Salutations my people! Apologies for such a long string of absence, school has kept me busy and without much (physical) to show for it. Now that I finally have something to report though, I thought it would be nice to stop in and say hello to all my strange relatives from abroad.
As far as I know, no one has posted one of these on the forum yet. I consider myself very lucky to have found one of the early trial versions of the French FELIN combat systems. They only way I could have been luckier is if it had been complete with filler and ballistic collar, and if it had been in the rare prototype camo instead of CE.
Ingenious (albeit unnecessary) system, one can zip on the combat vest over the armor so both can be removed at once, and no adjustments need to be made for sizing to accommodate the armor.
Vest is surprisingly comfortable (at least more so than the series 3 which preceded it). I assume the inside Velcro is for pontoons or similar spacers designed to offset the armor from the body for improved heat flow, a feature which is growing in popularity with more modern vests.
Another thing worthy of note is that the back is the only obvious place for hard plates to be installed, and is also the only place where nylon is used in the construction at all (on the inside of the pocket). The choice of HBT cotton, even for a trials piece, is a little baffling.
As far as I know, no one has posted one of these on the forum yet. I consider myself very lucky to have found one of the early trial versions of the French FELIN combat systems. They only way I could have been luckier is if it had been complete with filler and ballistic collar, and if it had been in the rare prototype camo instead of CE.
Ingenious (albeit unnecessary) system, one can zip on the combat vest over the armor so both can be removed at once, and no adjustments need to be made for sizing to accommodate the armor.
Vest is surprisingly comfortable (at least more so than the series 3 which preceded it). I assume the inside Velcro is for pontoons or similar spacers designed to offset the armor from the body for improved heat flow, a feature which is growing in popularity with more modern vests.
Another thing worthy of note is that the back is the only obvious place for hard plates to be installed, and is also the only place where nylon is used in the construction at all (on the inside of the pocket). The choice of HBT cotton, even for a trials piece, is a little baffling.