Wilderness, ares, or something else?

[JV_]

that heavy buckle going from the Wilderness to the Atlas.

The Wilderness frequent flier buckle is plastic, it's much lighter than their metal buckle.

[Crawls]

Do the two rings on the frequent flyer belt stack into a thick chunk or does the buckle remain a somewhat concealable cross section?
Thanks.

[rob_s]

I wore my Atlas belt yesterday with an OWB holster, and today with (gasp!) no holster or other load attached at all, and my shirt tucked in (already got compliments on it's appearance, BTW).

Something I noticed, and again something that makes me a fan of the Cobra solution, is that the Atlas is just as much of a pain, if not more so, than the Wilderness, to get open and closed. And when I do open and close it, I have to re-adjust the whole buckle system What I like about the Cobra is that it goes right back to where I had it simply by pressing the two halves together.

Maybe I just take more dumps than most people and therefore find these kinds of things to be more of an issue...

[Shellback]

Ease up on the fiber Rob

[NickA]

Do the two rings on the frequent flyer belt stack into a thick chunk or does the buckle remain a somewhat concealable cross section?
Thanks.

Haven't worn mine in a while but the two rings end up offset from each other when you tighten the belt down. I don't think it's any thicker than say the regular metal Wilderness buckle.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

[JV_]

the two rings end up offset from each other when you tighten the belt down. I don't think it's any thicker than say the regular metal Wilderness buckle.

I agree.

[t1tan]

I agree.

Same


So far of every belt I've tried, I always come back to my Frequent Flyer I've been wearing daily for the past 5+ years.

[Long tom coffin]

I'm leaning towards the Ares at this point, to be honest.

To be frank, it really doesn't bug me at all taking a little bit of extra time in the morning to put the belt on if I can just snap and unsnap as I please. Without going rob's route being descriptive about my defecation habits, I will say that having to readjust the wilderness buckle is something I find intensely annoying too. And that buckle jingling about when I'm trying to do my duty is annoying as hell, too :P

[rob_s]

To be frank, it really doesn't bug me at all taking a little bit of extra time in the morning to put the belt on

I think what bothers me most is that it doesn't have to be that way. As I'm threading on one of these viagra-stiff belts all I'm thinking about is that the damn thing doesn't have to be this stiff, gives me nothing in return, but is simply a disaster to put on for no reason that I can find other than being able to say it's super stiff.

Endeavor Stitch Works tells me he thinks he can make a Cobra-buckled 1.5" belt that mimics the stiffness profile of the Wilderness (stiff vertically, flexible horizontally) and I think I'm going to give him a shot.

I'm also going to use the Atlas tonight at ip-sic and see how I like it with a load of 4 mags plus the pistol.

[Long tom coffin]

I think what bothers me most is that it doesn't have to be that way. As I'm threading on one of these viagra-stiff belts all I'm thinking about is that the damn thing doesn't have to be this stiff, gives me nothing in return, but is simply a disaster to put on for no reason that I can find other than being able to say it's super stiff.

Endeavor Stitch Works tells me he thinks he can make a Cobra-buckled 1.5" belt that mimics the stiffness profile of the Wilderness (stiff vertically, flexible horizontally) and I think I'm going to give him a shot.

I'm also going to use the Atlas tonight at ip-sic and see how I like it with a load of 4 mags plus the pistol.

Actually, I think I am now going to stick with the Wilderness, although I may opt for the CSM this time around instead of the 5 stitch. I just got back from a morning session at the range, and one of the RO's I'm friendly with was showing off some of his new purchases. Two items of note were his new Suunto Core "Military" (which was hella nice) and an all black ares ranger belt. I got to tweak with the ranger belt for a minute, and it seriously turned me off. The scuba webbing was just way to stiff for my tastes, and the amount of scuba webbing up front combined with the cobra buckle just made it WAY too bulky for my purposes, even compared to my boat anchor buckle instructor belt. Aside from some previously mentioned minor annoyances, my 5 stitch has served me comfortably well, so I'll stick with that. I'm really looking for a new minimalist summer platform (cuz it gets so hot and humid here), so I think the way to go will be a new wilderness belt, CSM, X-concealment's Gen 2 Model C holster, and some Kytex pouches.

On an unrelated side note, I have another 350 absolutely flawless rounds through my LE trade in gen 2 19. This thing is flawless. I bought 1000 rounds of some Tula 115 and AE 124 from ATG about 2 weeks back, and I've already burned through nearly 3/4's of it this week alone. I can't stop shooting this gun.