Pilot Vest

[Bryan Bullard]

As you can see in the sled section I did quite a bit of modifying to the Pilot. I wanted to mod the vest as well to better fit me. I'm 6'2", 200lbs. The Pilot vest was not really made for me. LOL.

And me being me, I had to put on my thinking cap and get to work. I have looked at so many different types of vests and wanted to emulate various parts of them. Mainly the chest plate area.

While the vest itself does what it is supposed to to do, I wanted more. The connection at the top of the chest plate to the padding was weak. The middle area didn't fit my rib cage. And all the plastic just made it feel cheap. Where I live it's hard to find aluminum stock anywhere. I had to find it in everyday items. The plate I cut for the chest plate is from a tow away zone sign. It's 1/16" thick 5052 H38. So I knew it would work. The piece I cut to replace the plastic at the waist was from what's called a Hawk. Used for holding mud while doing drywall. Not sure of it's tensile strength but it works. Since I work at a hardware store our warehouse has various odds and ends laying around from either customer returns or damaged products. I'm lucky in that sense. The ratchets came from a set of drywall stilts. The stab buckles I got from Amazon when I bought a 4 pack of "tactical" belts. I found a weight lifting belt at a thrift store and used it for cushion under the ladder straps. I just happen to have quite a few of the small barrel bolts on hand so that made life easier. I'm always keeping an eye out for random pieces of aluminum that might come in handy. A thought I've had for awhile is getting ahold of a Flycam Vista II vest and just using the chest plate and spares from it with the Steadicam padding. I would change all the buckles and knobs and locating pins because from what I can tell they are not of great quality. Just a thought.