 So, I just recorded like half this video, but I forgot to hit record, so hopefully you'll get the better of the second take. Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Sibdel Defense, and we're back with another edition of American Minuteman gear. And we're here to talk about the macro chest rig, right? So we're going to actually take this one down. This is a modified taps rig and I'm going to show you how I modified it, how I have it set up. We'll go to the tabletop. If you want to do that, just go ahead and skip to that part in the video where I start doing that. Because first we're going to talk about why would an American Minuteman have a macro chest rig? Is that a good idea for an American Minuteman? So I will tell you straight out the gate that in general I'm not a fan of a macro chest rig for the American Minuteman. The reason is, is if China invades or whatever, all you got is you and your boys. You don't have the American military industrial complex behind you to support you and supply you. And so the idea of heavy infantry, which is how America typically fights, right? We give our guys a bunch of firepower and gear and equipment and we load them down way too much, but that's a different conversation. And then we send them out there to just stand and deliver, right? As an American Minuteman, that's probably not going to work for you. You don't have all that logistical support to be able to just stand and deliver. You don't have the heavy equipment. You don't have the MGs and the grenade launchers and the automatic grenade launchers and the Abrams tanks and the A-10 warthog planes. You don't have all that stuff. You got you and your boys and that's it, right? So by loading yourself down with a bunch of stuff, you in some ways, maybe in all the ways, you negate the advantage you have, which is to shoot and scoot, right? Which is to stay light, hit it and leave. The problem is the more stuff you put on, the more that weighs you down, right? And the more energy that takes. So if you've got to make a three mile movement and how fresh are you going to be at the end of that three mile movement? Now listen, your total fitness level, right? That allows you how much energy you have. And the lower your total fitness level, the less energy you have. But even if you have a high fitness level, which you should, okay? But even if you have a high fitness level, however much stuff you carry is still going to deplete a certain amount of percentage of that. And the less stuff you can carry, the less energy it's going to deplete. That's just basic math. So in general, I'm a fan of trying to carry less stuff because it allows you to maintain your key advantage, which is to stay fresh, stay light, stay mobile, right? However, there are certainly situations where you would want a macro chest rig as an American Minuteman. Maybe you do need to make a couple of day movement through something. And you just need an ability to carry a bunch of water, right? You're going to be out for three days for whatever reason. And you need to be able to carry all the stuff to support and supply you for those three days. So in that case, a macro chest rig might come in very good, in handy, might come in very good handy, I don't know what I'm trying to say there. It might behoove you to carry a macro chest rig for those situations. Or maybe you just like to be able to have a lot of tools, right? I like to be able to carry my blade up front and that's nice and I can do that on this rig. On other chest rigs, I can't do that, right? Or you're really big on just, hey, I like to have water on the chest rig all the time. Well, those are all good reasons to run a macro chest rig. So this is my taps rig modification. Let's sit it down, let's take a look at it on the tabletop. And let's see if this is something that you would maybe find beneficial for your kit setup. Now, full disclosure, I have not gotten out on a patrol and run this kit yet. So this is still in the ideation phase. I could come back and say this is too heavy. So don't hear me saying that you should therefore do this. This is still ideation and here to give you some ideas, okay? Now, let's talk about what we got going on here. So this is a taps rig that I bought off Amazon and then I made some modifications to. The first modification is I added an H harness. This is a crydex H harness. Not sure if you'll be able to see that there, but this is a crydex H harness that I got off Amazon, okay? Some Chinese thing. And it came with the H harness. I think it's designed for a spirit of systems rig. Kind of a knockoff there. And with the waist strap, okay? So it came with the waist strap and with the H harness. And it also came with the companion buckles here on the, make sure you can see that, the companion buckle back here. So I added a buckle here that mollied in. I added a buckle, make sure you can see that right here that mollied in, okay? I cut off, it didn't come with, but I would have cut off the S strap that these normally come with. That looked horrible. Wasn't even willing to try that. And then it did come with a single waist strap here that I cut off, because I didn't want to do that either, okay? So I went with a more traditional H harness rig. That's been pretty comfortable just in trying it on and off and kind of playing with it a bunch, okay? So let's start on the front and work our way around the back. I added two quarts of water. So I got one here and then one here. And that is decently heavy, but it's functional. So I used a, I think this is a marine kind of coyote brown here canteen pouch that has a scrunchie on top. I'm not sure this is my first time using these. I'm used to the traditional canteen pouches. These are, I think, the newer versions. And this scrunchie on top makes it, I mean, that's not coming out of there when you wanna clip that. Like you gotta really work in order to remove this canteen from there. Wow, even there, look at that. So you gotta really work to remove it. Not sure if I like that yet or not, I'll be honest. That's gonna take some more playing with. But it does a great job of retaining your canteen. So even if that gets unbuckled, let me tell ya, you are not losing that canteen anytime soon, which could potentially eliminate your need for a dummy cord, depending on how anal you are about that kind of thing, okay? Across the front here, this is a double mag pouch. Okay, so I just stuffed two AR mags in there. That's a bad dye job I did on a batch of ACU. That's this hideous brown. Here we just have a tourniquet. Okay, I had room, so I stuffed in a tourniquet pouch. This is a admin pouch from, I think, Shellback Tactical makes this one. And in here I just have some electrical tape, a notebook. What is this, some little lens cleaner wipes, an extra battery for something. That's a CR123HCR2023 or something, probably for my optic. Again, nothing in here. Okay, but you could carry all kinds of little adminny stuff in there, compass, whatever, again, this was a pouch I had laying around, so this ended up fitting here, and I liked the idea of being able to have a macro chest rig and having access to tools up front. It does have this kind of fold-downy thing, so I could put a map in here or whatever. In here I have my cord for my ears so that I can run my radio right into my ears, okay? And then here, this is just a little pouch. You could carry a flashlight, whatever. Right now I have a mag in there because I took this to a training and wanted a pistol mag, okay? Over here this is just a iFAC, this is a Dark Angel Medical iFAC, big fan of them with another tourniquet there, okay? So again, iFAC, one tourniquet, two tourniquet, and then back here I actually have a third tourniquet. We'll get to that. Another double mag pouch, right? So again I have eight mags on this. I like being able to have that and then that water again over here, okay? So on the back here, what it came with originally was these straps kind of like right here, right? This traditional mag strap, whatever thing. I don't know, I thought it was hideous, it was horrible. I cut all those off and inside here I had a set of the Haley kind of kydex insert things, right? That retain mag, so when the mag sits in there, it kind of squeezes it like that. So it's kind of a click in, click out feature. So those all fit in there pretty well. So I stuffed all those. You can buy a knockoff version on Amazon, I'm sure. But they do a pretty good job of retaining the mags in and of themselves. So I have four kind of free floaties. You know, I'm not jumping out of helicopters or anything cool like that, but I like that these can come easily in and out when I need them to. That mag is not full, I need to fix that. So I like that they can come in and out when I need them to, all right? That's nice. I like having kind of four open and then four more retained that I can then feed into this system back here. So that's how I'm gonna continue to run it is to feed these into here. These are my fight use mags. And then when I get time, I'll switch my full mags into here, my partials back into here, right? That's the system I'm gonna run. On this side here, this is a blade that I mullied in there so that that can stay in. It came with its own kydex sheath that I just kind of not mullied it, but paracorded it in so that I can draw the knife and it doesn't come out too bad and it'll still stay in there. This one is just empty for right now. I'm not sure if I'm gonna do anything with this or not, but that is just empty for now. I am gonna kind of use this as my magazine pouch for when I'm getting this kit to be ready to go out. I'll put a mag in here and that's just where the mag that will go in my gun will stay and then probably just run it empty aside from that, okay? Over here on this side, this one I did just put a tourniquet in. That kind of curves around your body so I think that'd be a tough spot to have a mag in and out so I just made this my permanent TQ pouch. Again, macro rig, I like being able to have three tourniquets on the rig and then I carry one of my guns, so that's four. I'm able to easily carry four tourniquets and I like that idea. The more tourniquets you can have, usually the better. If it's a macro rig, I might as well carry it, right? So tourniquet there. This one is open. This is where my radio would go, okay? And that's where I would carry there. So those are all the real modifications I did on the front. On the back, let's take a look at that. So on the back, we already talked about this H harness which is one of my big additions. The other major modification I made was this came with a metal zipper pull right here and so I chopped that off and just put some pair cord on, stripped out the pair cord and then knotted it and burned the edges. So that way it doesn't dangle, right? It had metal on metal here. It was jingling every time it moved. A terrible idea, the U.S. military. I don't know what you're thinking there. So pair cord, much, much better. It's silent. It's replaceable. Makes my life a lot easier. I don't have anything in there right now but if I did, that would be cool. Back here, this is just a Velcro. Again, a little Admini pouch. I have a checklist. I'm not supposed to show you that. That's probably coming later. Checklist there of gear that I have before I step off. And then here, I have a laminated range card because that's nice to have on your kit all the time. So that's what I keep in there. So that's the macro rigged American Minuteman chest rig. Basically just a modified taps rig, right? Not basically, that's exactly what it is. Is a modified taps rig. And I hope that you think that is helpful for how you should consider your kit. Not necessarily that you should set your kit up exactly this way, but again, gives you ideas and thoughts of what do you need to carry? Do you like the idea of having tools up front and a blade on your kit, right? If so, this might be a good win for you. If you're like, I don't need any of that. Well then, hey, maybe it's not for you. And or if you know that you have some kind of mission set and you live in a remote area and you know that when you do stuff, it's always gonna be for days at a time. Again, this might be a good setup for you. So hope this is helpful. Hope it gives you some thoughts. Do brave deeds and endure. To be able to have a pistol. So those are the social things you're definitely gonna