The Journey of a Thousand Miles…
Introduction
…begins with a single step. Welcome to Top to Toe: A Loadout Periodical, a periodical series on the blog in which we will cover, in time, every element of building a loadout from (you guessed it) top to toe. A series like this – likely to run over at least a dozen or so instalments – could quickly get overwhelming (for you and me both), so this first instalment is really to set out some of the key aims and intentions of the series as well as the key philosophies which will guide its substantive content.
Aims and Intentions
Travis Haley in recent years has coined the phrase “thinkers before shooters”. The philosophy behind that – though obviously coming from the world of real firearms – is absolutely true of the T2T series. I feel pretty strongly that thought should be going into every single element of a loadout long before any webbing gets threaded up. The ultimate aim for me is to create a resource that can be tapped into when you are considering how to put your own kit together, encouraging you to think deeply and plan closely to then get the as much as you possibly can from your gear choices. None of the articles will be there to say, “this is what I’ve done, so you should do it too”. The thought process behind each instalment in the series, and so the structure of the instalments themselves, will be tripartite:
Problems that the equipment can solve
Firstly, identifying the problems that a given class equipment can solve. Not all kit solves all problems, and not all kit is right for all situations – far from it, in fact. Identifying the actual holes that a class of equipment is broadly designed to plug is an important first step.
Identifying your kit problems
Secondly, there’s no point in outlaying money on something if it doesn’t actually help you out. Identifying whether something is a problem that you require to be solved by reference to your mission set and personal objectives, is essential to inform your decision making.
Solving your problems by choice and configuration
Thirdly and finally, you can have all the top-quality kit in the world, but if it is configured badly then it’s a waste of your time and money. The market for tactical kit is also a minefield, with ever-more manufacturers offering products and solutions that didn’t exist even five years ago. That can quickly be overwhelming – indeed, putting my own kit together (still very much a work in progress, with its own article to follow) took a significant amount of thinking and planning simply due to the huge number of product options now available on the market. Really drilling down on how to choose specific products within a class of equipment, and then configuring those products to get the most out of them, is the final – and, arguably, the most important – step to getting the most out of your gear.
At the outset
At the outset, it’s probably worthwhile to clarify a couple of things:
The focus of instalments
Firstly, not everyone cares much about kit – and that’s totally fine. If you don’t give a shit about loadouts, this series probably isn’t for you (unless you’d like to give a shit, but don’t know how to start giving a shit– in which case, win!). We’ll be taking deep dives on the minutiae of tactical gear, and that (very understandably) isn’t for everyone.
Secondly, the focus of this series will overwhelmingly be on so-called ‘real steel’ gear, i.e., equipment which is manufactured to be used in real-world military or combat situations. At that, we’ll also be focusing on high-end real steel kit, so this will largely exclude stuff which is designed for mass issue (which, infamously, tends to be made by the lowest bidder). Obviously, there are necessarily some exceptions here: guns (surprise surprise), certain weapon accessories, and certain comms equipment, where the real steel versions are either actively prohibited from civilian ownership or otherwise exceptionally hard to come by, will be discussed by reference to ‘airsoft versions’ of these products. There will also be areas in which it simply doesn’t actually make sense to talk about kit by reference to the ‘real world’, for example in discussing things like ammunition capabilities, the application and options for certain PPE, and similar. Finally, we won’t be covering medical equipment in this series in any meaningful way: while carrying medical equipment is always a good idea (and I personally carry a small functional trauma kit and a boo-boo kit on my loadout), this is an area best left to the pros in terms of deciding what to carry and why to carry it, and it is extremely important to take the relevant training before administering first aid in any situation.
With that said, the philosophy and thought process behind purchasing and constructing your loadout still apply 1:1 whether you’re buying real steel or replica kit – so I would nevertheless encourage you to take as much as you can away from those elements – but pretty much all of the discussion in this series will be by reference to real steel equipment and will assume the functionality and quality of real steel kit in the conclusions it draws.
Why premium real steel?
It does feel necessary to briefly discuss the philosophy behind buying premium real steel kit. Premium kit typically comes with a premium price tag – indeed, it is easy to spend thousands of pounds on a loadout before you even get into thinking about things like night vision. Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that you should go out and drop £3-5k ripping out and replacing your existing loadout – in most cases this would not be at all sensible. The supervening philosophy as to ‘why’, though, is that you get what you pay for, and it generally pays to have the best quality kit you can have given your budgetary constraints.
99% of the kit I now buy is real steel, frankly because I have trashed so much replica kit in the past that constantly having to replace things became a chore. I’m pretty hard on my kit, and I very much expect my kit to work around me rather than me working around it. That drives a need for quality, ingenuity, and consistency, which I have personally found difficult to get from replica kit. Companies which manufacture premium real steel kit tend to be at the cutting edge of research and development, and that comes at a cost. Wherever possible, I think purchasing from companies who have sunk the significant R&D costs into getting a product from conception to market ready is the right thing to do. Supply chains and manufacturing processes are also more transparent when purchasing from these companies, so you can be more certain that your kit has been built by companies who pay and treat employees fairly, and who are buying in raw materials which have been sourced and manufactured ethically. Personally, this is something which is important to me – mainly due to influence from my line of work – and something which I am prepared to pay a premium for. Premium real steel kit also holds its value very well, meaning you’re unlikely to swallow much money on it when you go to sell it on, and there is also an increasing second-hand market for this sort of equipment meaning most things are reasonably liquid.
Importantly, absolutely none of this means that anyone kitted out in top-of-the-line kit is going to look down on you, or anyone else, for running a replica plate carrier and some surplus MTP… leave the paranoia and negativity at the door. Simply configuring your kit in the best way will enable you to get a significant amount more out of it, regardless of what brand the label has printed in.
But I already have a loadout and I don’t want to buy more kit!
Like I said above, I really wouldn’t advocate for going and buying a bunch of new stuff purely based on the contents of this series. There will definitely still be a lot for you to take from the series, though: mainly around how to get the most out of your existing loadout through considering the decisions you have made around setup and configuration. Obviously, a huge amount of the fun with airsoft is the kit – so if some of the instalments in this series give you the itch for kit, then by all means go scratch it… but no hobby is worth putting yourself under additional financial strain, especially given the general economic situation at the moment, so don’t sweat it.
Final thoughts
That’s pretty much it for the introduction to the T2T series. The various instalments of the series will feature over the coming months. If you’re interested in what’s in store here or across the blog generally, you can join the mailing list to get an email notification of new posts on the blog as and when they are published. I’m super excited to launch this series which will hopefully become a genuinely useful resource for airsofters new and old looking to up their game through how they run their kit.
Thanks for taking the time, and have a great day!
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