Vendors at the Olympic Complex

[BigAl]

Connor Rosie's next jacket will definitely be from Phillipa. She was very helpful when Rosie had issues at last years ESSU meeting. I could not recommend her highly enough. Much easier to go directly to her and get a jacket/trousers than buy something else and then have to take it to her to get it altered anyway. As a disabled single parent the big issue is finding the money to buy new kit. Family have helped out in the past, but it's not a bottomless well.

Alan

[IRLConor]

Connor Rosie's next jacket will definitely be from Phillipa. She was very helpful when Rosie had issues at last years ESSU meeting. I could not recommend her highly enough. Much easier to go directly to her and get a jacket/trousers than buy something else and then have to take it to her to get it altered anyway.

Good to hear you've already had a positive experience with Philippa. Like you, I can't recommend her highly enough and she'd be my first port of call for anyone within shouting distance of Wolverhampton.

As a disabled single parent the big issue is finding the money to buy new kit. Family have helped out in the past, but it's not a bottomless well.

Indeed. Unfortunately neither Pippa nor Hitex are particularly cheap. They're both fantastic value for money, but you have to have the money to hand first. :(

It might be worth popping an entry into this too: http://intershoot.co.uk/acatalog/AWARDS.html The number of entries is usually low and Intershoot's catalogue is big enough that if your daughter wins the £250 it will find some good use.

[USMC0802]

Assuming that buying from one of the well known makers should get you a pass on a new jacket is very optimistic. The majority of people I know with new clothing fail EC unless they have worn and trained with it for a few weeks or went through a break in period. They normally pass after beating it with a mallet or running it over the back of a chair to loosen it up. Knowing that a new $800 jacket will only loosen up over time, I guess I would rather have one overly stiff that I could make to pass knowing it is as legally stiff as possible when it is new (as opposed to one that is soft to start with and will only get softer). I have heard of a jacket passing EC, passing a random check and then failing later in the week supposedly due to the amount of humidity in the air that the jacket soaked up. I guess that could be possible.

[IRLConor]

Assuming that buying from one of the well known makers should get you a pass on a new jacket is very optimistic. The majority of people I know with new clothing fail EC unless they have worn and trained with it for a few weeks or went through a break in period. They normally pass after beating it with a mallet or running it over the back of a chair to loosen it up. Knowing that a new $800 jacket will only loosen up over time, I guess I would rather have one overly stiff that I could make to pass knowing it is as legally stiff as possible when it is new (as opposed to one that is soft to start with and will only get softer). I have heard of a jacket passing EC, passing a random check and then failing later in the week supposedly due to the amount of humidity in the air that the jacket soaked up. I guess that could be possible.

Those issues appear (to me) to be slightly less pronounced with some of the newer synthetic materials. My Hitex jacket is almost a year old and hasn't softened out noticeably like my old Thune one did in its first year. (I've also shot about as much in the last year as I did in the first three years of using the Thune.) The Hitex jacket passed EC after no more than 10 hours of wear.

You're definitely correct though, when it comes to canvas jackets the dominant strategy is to buy them overly stiff and wear/bash them into spec before reaching equipment control. Canvas is also really obviously affected by temperature and moisture so it's easier to get caught out by environmental issues. On the cold, wet days all-too-frequent in this neck of the woods my old KT jacket was like a rock.