Kudos on a very well thought-out kit and an amazing packing job! How much does it weigh? For the urban side you may want to consider cash, coin, cell phone charger and copies of your driver's license, medical insurance card, passport, and a spare credit card. On the first-aid side, how about some oil of cloves and Dent-Temp adhesive/filler.

Very nice. Excellent idea on the fedex tyvek envelope. Those things are very tough.

After looking through it a few times and comparing I have to say nice.

I likely have more stuff in my pockets than you carry but overall our small packs are about the same.
Minor brand differences.
I suppose the biggest difference is that this small pack of yours goes inside my daypack and that carries my spare jacket and windpants as well.

Hey Sybert, Siebert...Close enough! I will get one of the "monoscopes" because they look cool!

Paragon, I've only got three less than glowing points with you kit:

Not a fan of flares. I live in the woods.

Not a fan of chem kit. Personal call.

Wish I could have put two of my three votes on you over at ZS.

Such an awesome, well thought out kit.

Thanks for sharing.

I hadn't really ever added it up before because it was mainly just extra stuff that I had from other kits, as well as some spares. I just ran the numbers for you and it comes up to about $550 -- somewhat more than I would have guessed until you asked. All the gear is pretty high quality, so you could probably duplicate it for less if you were willing to cut some corners.

The weight is just over 3lbs (1.5kg), so about the same as a Nalgene bottle with a litre of water.


My wife and I had dropped off some stuff at our local Goodwill store a few years ago and I found a couple of them there. They had clearly never been used, and were marked $0.49 each or something silly like that. If you have a thrift store nearby, you might try looking there, as they also had several other interesting bags and pouches.


There is actually a second 1L water bag added inside the Ritter PSP, and Aquamira claims the “Frontier is tested and certified to filter out >99.9% of Cryptosporidium and Giardia”.


Refer to the links that BorkBorkBork graciously added. Mine is one of the original German varieties from Haverhills, although I’m sure most are similar.


That’s a very good suggestion – thanks!


The kit weighs 3lbs 5 oz.

Although I’d never be able to get a cell phone charger in there, everything else you mentioned would make useful additions - thanks!

Thanks once again to everyone for all the useful suggestions and feedback.

Jim

Yes, but those are relatively large in size. IIRC, the Frontier had a filter size of around 3 microns which is much larger than other filters and doesn't catch much bacteria at all. For example, Cryto spores are around 5-6 microns in size. Bacteria are under a micron in size.

For comparison, Sweetwater, Katydyn, PUR and MSR filters all have filters rated to around 0.3 microns.

To quote Aquamira: [the Frontier] ... is not certified to remove >99.9999% of bacteria and >99.99% of virus required by the US EPA water purifier standard.[my bold and underline]

To quote Doug Ritter: Avoid, also, straw style filters through which you literally suck the water. Though the concept is appealing, especially for weight conscious survival use, they don't filter very well in the first place and clog very quickly and are then useless. In fact, the EPA forced them off the market a while back, but you still see them around, or you may even have one, in which case, you ought to ditch it.

Thanks for the additional information on the Frontier filter -- I hadn't seen that mentioned before, so I'll look into it further this weekend.



Yeah, I'd really have to find myself in quite a bind before I'd consider launching pyrotechnics in a forest.

I figured the potassium permanganate/glycerin would draw some comments, although I've carried that combination in various kits for several years without any issues. The containers that I use are very robust and of high quality, so I have no real concerns that they'll leak (although they are packed in separate compartments of the kit just to be safe).

Turns out I could have used a couple of extra votes, so thanks for the nice comment. I did actually use one of my votes for your kit...

Jim

Thanks!