Mylle's Austrian Stuff

Another mint KAZ59 parka.

New austrian camo blouse:









Compared to the digital desert camo uniform, they added more velcro for the right arm pocket.
Beside that it is identical. Will make a comparison pic with all the austrian camos together.

More to follow:

Love all your stuff Alex! Especially jealous of all the peadot, especially the Grenzschutz patched ones, and the neu tarn. I saw some for sale recently but it sold out so fast I didn't even have a chance to grab any. The digital desert stuff in particular is an amazing find, you're the only person I've seen to have any of it IIRC.

Thanks Nate, yeah the Grenzschutz parkas are very cool and not so easy to find. The digi desert uniform is the best of all the modern austrian camos IMHO. I like it even more than the new non digi camo, which is based on the digi desert pattern. And yes, I guess Im most likely the only one who has 2 complete sets+ headgear.

I just received an unissued jacket and boonie hat (sadly, no trousers!) in the new camo. It is VERY nice. So wonderful to see something new that isn't either Multicam or traditional Digital. Of the Western militaries, this is the most interesting new uniform in a very long time. Funny it comes from a country that had one pattern for 15 years and then nothing for 40!

Steve

The thing that intrigues me is, this pattern was obviously designed to create horizontal bands, so much so that, for the temperate zone version at least, they seem to have gone to the extra trouble of cutting the panels in such a way that the bands are very neatly preserved even in the front of the garment. Yet the band drawing is also very narrow vertically when judged against "serious" working patterns of the past, creating a very busy repeat effect more typically seen on urban fashion patterns.

However, on closer inspection, the temperate drawing is actually composed of two sets of bands stacked one on top of the other. They are virtually identical, except for a thin strip where some of the dark brown shapes in one set of bands is absent in the other.

Making modifications to some shapes in an otherwise copy-pasted expansion of a camo drawing is a proven method to make a large internally consistent yet non-repetitive pattern with minimal effort (as for example seen in the old pea pattern, where a cluster of shapes was copied and flipped 180 degrees before being pasted back), but never in such a ridiculously insignificant way.

Why bother making any modification at all, if the resulting differences are only visible to the most anal of camo-nerds stuck indoors due to non-stop rain?!  

Curiously, the desert version seems to have done away with this silly effort and just accepted the busy repeats as they are. They didn't even bother lining up the front panels anymore, probably realizing that this was also an invisible (and likely wasteful, in terms of pattern cutting and work flow) effort once the wearer puts on his/her field gear.

The biggest problem with this uniform like with the desert digital ones is the fading starts very quickly.
The colors look cool on an unissued piece. But if you wash it a few times it looks crappy.

Slowly all the pieces are coming together:

Yup. Slowly but surely..

Some trousers would be a thing....

Yes, I can use trousers..








                                                                                                                     

I also have a jacket and boonie without trousers! I suspect I got mine from the same source as Rip.

Steve

There was a pair of trousers on eBay recently, but I was not the lucky one who won them

Well, looks like the 3 of us are some of the first US collectors to be fortunate enough to have this wild pattern..

Verusteleka was briefly selling boonies and blouses.. Perhaps we should keep an eye out there..

The stuff from varusteleka was surely a rejected batch from the producer.
I have a boonie and a blouse and the sizes absolutely arent right. Also my boonie has red ink stains.
Maybe some of this stuff was good but a friend of mine also ordered a medium sized blouse but it just was a barely small regular size.

Everything I have in this camo is from the same spanish company- FECSA except the fieldcap which is from SLAMA.
And except the stuff from varusteleka they sizes are according to specs. I highly doubt that uniforms in this camo which passed the factory QC and a lot of units
still dont have, would have been sold to the public.

Good info, Alex. Thanks..


I can confirm that FECSA is a producer of quality garments ..

They supplied austrian uniforms beginning with DAZ75 OD till camo since the introduction of the KAZ03 uniform. But I guess with the varusteleka batch something had happened during production at FECSA or their suppliers which led to the new camo uniform-pieces being sold off. And Im not sure if Austrian MOD was aware of that, I think- not.

No, they were not. And not happy about it either  

Exactly what I expected. As taxpayers we also shouldnt be.

mylle wrote:They supplied austrian uniforms beginning with DAZ75 OD till camo since the introduction of the KAZ03 uniform. But I guess with the varusteleka batch something had happened during production at FECSA or their suppliers which led to the new camo uniform-pieces being sold off. And Im not sure if Austrian MOD was aware of that, I think- not.

FESCA produced my jacket and boonie. Interesting. It does seem like a batch slipped out onto the market. I am not surprised to hear that the Austrian government is not happy about that

My boonie has a small tag with a red "QC" stamp on it. The jacket does not. Sizes seem to be fine, construction fine. If they were rejected for quality reasons, my only guess is color consistency or something subtle like that.

This may be similar to what happened when the Danes had a dispute with a Polish contractor making m/84 uniforms. The black color bled into the others and was, understandably rejected. From the little I know the Polish company felt the Danish government broke the contract and so they sold off their stuff to recover costs. I don't know if the Danish government approved of this as a solution to the dispute or what. All I know is the market was flooded with the stuff for a short while. Other than the printing problem the quality of the uniform was very good.

Steve

I got a blouse in 88-92III-IV from varusteleka and I gave it my neighbor  who wore 88-92III-IV sized uniforms during one of the UN missions in Lebanon, to try it out.He couldnt close the jacket at all. Another OD KAZ03 from FECSA in the same size was no problem. Maybe some uniforms are wrong sized, maybe the night vision thing was a problem, maybe the sewing on some, who knows.... I just can tell that my blouse
isnt exactly the size it should be. The blouse I posted before some weeks in my size fits me well and is from FECSA. But I got it from an austrian source, the combat shirt is also from FECSA and the size is right.

Wet weather set:











Looks like we cant afford goretex membrane anymore.....

Also got another desert digi blouse, quite faded and from the same year as the other two I had, seems the majority of the second gen desert
digi uniform was made in 2018.

Well done.
Generally Tarnanzug items are cut smaller compared to KAZ03 stuff