Picked up a couple extra mantles for my Aladdin lamp yesterday evening. Always nice to be able to cross something off of The List. Actually, I need to pick up one more mantle. I want a total of five. The mantle I have now has been in occasional use for the last, oh, ten years I guess…but I dont use the lamp very often at all. At most, a few hours a year. However, if I need to depend on it for a longer period of time, I want to have spare mantles. Still need to get a spare chimney, wick and burner as well as a wick trimming tool. Once thats done, I’ll be set for that particular lamp and will then pick up a spare.
===============
Haiti. Third-world illiterate countries will always be like this. Until someone decides to take the risk and bring business and industry to these little nations they will continue to be little hotbeds of revolution. Not. My. Problem.
===============
Still havent picked up an 26.5mm flare or smoke. Im hoping to run into some at a gun show but I suspect I better buy some soon before the surplus military stocks dry up and become difficult to find. I just hate paying the additional $20 for HazMat fees. Grrrr.
===============
Another item I need to pick up this year – USMC combat tents on eBay. $180~ and worth every penny. Buddy of mine has one (or two) and they are a good piece of gear. A bit heavy, but worth it.

6 thoughts on “

  1. Another item I need to pick up this year – USMC combat tents on eBay. $180~ and worth every penny. Buddy of mine has one (or two) and they are a good piece of gear. A bit heavy, but worth it.

    I was interested to learn that the USMC Combat Tent is manufactured by Eureka. One of my tents is made by them and I am quite pleased with the quality. A comparable 3-season COTS tent from Eureka runs about $150 new. If the it’s in new condition, I believe a USMC combat tent represents a pretty good value. Hell, the color alone is worth the extra money. Also, I believe the materials are a bit heavier than their camping models, which would explain the extra two pounds or so.

    Though I’m not certain of your application, I wonder if a canvas wall tent might be more appropriate for mobile operations. Something like a GP small, or a canvas COTS tent is going to be a few hundred dollars, will be more durable and can accomodate more people and equipment. Unless you’re planning to be on foot, which may be the reason you prefer the USMC combat tent, I don’t understand preference for the smaller tent.

  2. I personally have a smaller tent by Eureka, mostly for bugging out purposes. It’s three-season, and functionally speaking it’s a year-round tent, here in the South. I want to acquire a larger canvas tent, but the cost (right now) is prohibitive.

    Can’t speak highly enough of Eureka, though.

  3. A couple of the LMI have these tents so Ive gotten to experience them firsthand on one of our annual exercises. Theyre a bit heavy but they reek of quality and durability. They are easily worth the $ and unlike 99% of the commercial product, are available in subdued (read: camo/earth) colors.

    A GP canvas tent would be okay if we were looking to establish a base camp for a fairly good bit of time but that really isnt in our plans. We’re looking for a tent suitable for three-to-seven day trips away from our base of operations.

    Another nice thing about the USMC tent is the generous reapir/spare parts kit that comes with it. That has major appeal to our way of thinking. Although we hadnt established a ‘group standard’ for tents, its just turning out that we’re all selecting this tent for ourselves. And, yes, we planning on being on foot most of the time. If we werent, we’d be in a vehicle and that means we’d just be sleeping in the back of the rig or set up not too far from it.

    Having said that, several of the LMI *do* have some of the smaller GP tents, but we just dont envision much use for them unless out houses burn down or something.

  4. Canvas tents, IMHO, are great for more permanent or lengthy installations. Theyre quite heavy and definitely not part of a man-portable equipment list. The USMC Eureka tent is very much what I think youd be looking for. Go check em out on eBay, keywords ‘combat tent’.

  5. Theyre a bit heavy…

    I once read that the optimal pack weight should be no more than 20% of body weight. Of course, this is for hiking purposes. I think the military shoots for about twice that amount. For an average guy, an optimal load is going to be something around 30-40 pounds. At a little over 8 pounds, the USMC combat tent isn’t egregiously heavy, particularly if it’s shared between two persons. My 3-man, 3-season tent comes in close to 6 pounds and it’s hardly a burden.

    They are easily worth the $ and unlike 99% of the commercial product, are available in subdued (read: camo/earth) colors.

    I totally concur about the color. In fact, if I didn’t already have a 3-man, 3-season Eureka tent, I’d buy one of these. Hell, I might just buy one at some point anyway.

    we planning on being on foot most of the time.

    That’s really the primary criteria for the choice of shelter. I have a tent suitable for man-portable operations and one more suitable for mobile operations. Unfortunately, the larger tent is difficult to erect and isn’t all that great in terms of quality. Some LMIs and I have used a GP medium for our purposes that was loaned to us. We were considering purchasing it, but found that one could get nice canvas COTS wall tents for $500-$1000 (GP mediums go for ~$800). I’ve even seen some smaller ones for less than $500. I’d like to get one of these to replace the large tent that I have now.

  6. I’d like to have a canvas tent stored at an alternate location, sort of a fallback position kind of thing (this would be in the case of an immediate, life-threatening end of the world as we know it, as opposed to the slow burn that I think is more likely). The canvas tent would be there as sort of an overflow measure – if I start picking up more survivors than could be comfortably kept in my fallback position, I could always erect the tent.

    eh, it’s a dream.

Comments are closed.