Quick Overview

Typical winch hooks are not as safe and secure as a pin and shackle system. Really when you are to the point you need to pull out your winch it likely getting into a serious situation and that is when you need your gear to be at it’s best. The new ProLink shackle mount system, by Factor 55, is much safer, stronger and in the end smarter choice.

Look at these photos to see the obvious advantages of the ProLink vs. the standard hook. The least of which is how well designed and attractive the ProLink product is, I mean honestly this thing is a sexy piece of equipment.

ProLink Benefits over Standard Hook Winch Mount

• Screw pin shackles are up to 5X stronger than conventional winch hooks
• Conventional hooks are too small to safely fit both ends of a recovery strap
• Recover straps cannot slip out of a shackle like they can with hooks
• Hook safety latches are not rated for loads and can tear recovery straps
• Conventional hook surfaces add higher stresses to recovery strap fibers, resulting in decreased strap ratings
• Shackles can be quickly removed and stowed away until needed for winching.
• Hooks do not cinch neatly against fairleads and are prone to rattling and loosening
• Conventional winch hooks are designed for chains – not commonly used recovery straps
• Engineered, Tested, and Made in USA — Patent Pending
• Stress analyzed using COSMOS FEA and destructively tested for confirmation
• Billet construction — precision machined from 6061-T6 Kaiser Aluminum round bar
• 16,000 pound max load rating
• Fits all steel cables and synthetic ropes up to 3/8″ in diameter
• Fits eyes equipped with standard or tube thimbles to 3/8 inch diameters
• 1.2 inch shackle tab thickness virtually eliminates “shackle rattle”
• Massive 5/8 inch diameter carbon steel double shear pin – 6Al-4V Titanium upgradeable
• Optional EPDM “Rubber Guard” protects alloy Hawse fairleads — rubber barb attachment
• Can be installed and removed in minutes — simple snap ring removal
• Cinches neatly against all types of fairleads — Hawse or Roller
• Beautifully anodized and zinc plated in the USA

Check out the ProLink Products in further detail:

We have the Standard ProLink

The ProLink Loaded (includes a Titanium Pin & Rubber Guard)

Replacement 5/8 Titanium Pins

and the ProLink Rubber Guard

Quick Intro

A charcoal chimney is an easy and efficient way to get charcoal hot and ready for your next BBQ. This innovative Chimney made by Sandbar is constructed of 4lb stainless steel with a solid wooden handle, it holds 450 cubic inches of coals and get this, when packing up for traveling it folds to 1.5″ inches tall.

Video Review

Experience

First off for those not familiar with what a charcoal chimney does, it eliminates the need for lighter fluid as the design in a chimney is to allow the coals to start burning much more rapidly in a tight container vs. lying on the bottom of the BBQ. Most designs for chimneys are cylinders, with vents at the bottom, a handle for pouring the coals. They are easy to light, simply fill, put some newspaper under the chimney, light and wait 10-15 minutes.

The problem I have noticed with the other chimneys is that because of there round design they are not ideal for taking along on an adventure. The other thing I have noticed with other chimneys is there typical cheap construction, checking out a couple at the Home improvement center the other day I quite astonished at how poorly made they appeared compared with the FlatFire.

The FlatFire is well constructed of Stainless steel, and nicely folds flat for travel and storage purposes. I got a chance to test it out a couple of times and have to say it was a nice and fun way to light up a BBQ Grill. I say fun, simply because watching the coals go from smoky to blazing hot is fun for most boys to watch, I think we all have a little pyro in us.

During the video review of the FlatFire, the December Temperature was around 20 degrees and the coals had been stored outside. It took roughly 15 minutes from the initial lighting to the point of having hot coals ready for the grill. I think it could get closer to ten or twelve minutes if it was the summer time. A nice side-effect of using a charcoal starter like this is you don’t have to use starter fluid, thus you can avoid the fumes and flavor of fuel. We will continue to test The FlatFire with a it’s companion grill next month.

The Good

• Solid Stainless steel construction
• Compact Fold-Flat Feature for Travel/Transportation
• Cool Wooden Handle
• Saves Time when Lighting Charcoal

The Bad

• More Expensive then other brands (but a great value at the same time)

Quick intro

Another impressive product that we saw at the Outdoor Retail show a couple of weeks ago was an emergency tool called the Survivor Firestarter. This little nugget is colored in a bright plastic orange handle and along with the flint and strike it has a magnesium stick, a compass and a temperature gauge.

Video Review

Experience

I took the Survivor Firestarter with me this last weekend on a trip in the Moab area to give it a test. I had briefly tried out the alloy flint which is quite bright and gives a 500 degree spark. But I had not yet tested any of the other functions. The top of the tool has a simple floating compass that seemed to work well enough, and a temperature gauge that read 100 degrees while we were down in the desert. The manufacturer told me that the temperature gauge would also work in water. The real test came when it was time to try and start a fire.

I brought a good six-inch blade with the intention of using it to scrape shard’s of magnesium, but I could not locate my knife when the time came so I just used the equipped striking tool instead. I scraped off tiny shreds of magnesium on a rock and then striked the flint in order to light it. But the wind was strong and I had not really built a small pile of tinder so all that happened was the magnesium would light and burn rapidly.

Eventually we built a bit of a wind shelter and were successful with some dry paper and the magnesium scrapes in getting a fire going. For a first time attempt it was a lot more difficult then I excepted in starting a fire. My take away is that as an emergency tool it would have been wise for me to try it out and be familiar with it before an emergency occured. Also it would be easier I believe to get larger pieces of magnesium burning, thus the need for a descent size sharp knife. One down side of the Survivor Firestarter is that once the flint or magnesium runs out then it’s a throw away and you would need to replace it. All-in-all it is a compact, multi-function, emergency tool that can be thrown in any small bag or emergency kit.

The Good

• Three-in-one Emergency Tool
• Striking tool is large enough for big hands to use
• Compact
• Magnesium burns at 5000 degrees
• Lights when wet

The Bad

• Shaving the Magnesium takes practice
• Disposable, (Website says 20,000 strikes)

It has now been an official week since the Summer Outdoor Retail Show and we have we have our report of four items that impressed us. The cool thing is that three of these items are super small, lightweight and have the potential so save your butt. Here are the highlights:

One of the coolest little pieces of equipment we spotted was the NanoStyrker by Exotac. This little unit is a compact fire starter produced by a precision engineer. Some of the features we like about the NanoStryker was it’s size and weight. This thing is less then 4″ in length and well under an ounce of weight. It has a nice anodized aluminum body, a little key ring which is the striking tool. The striking rod is waterproof and made of ferrocerium and magnesium and burns at 5500 F degrees. Finally the developer of this product was thinking when he designed the striking rod to be replaceable – innovative, made in the USA little tool.

The only thing that bugged us was that the strike handle is really small and could be hard to grip properly if your hands are wet, dirty or wearing a glove.

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Innovation seemed to be the trend of the majority of the products we saw. A new fly rod called the Fikkes takes on the idea of being a two-in-one. The Fikkes Fly Hiker converts from a solid trekking pole to a fly rod. The Fikkes is an adjustable carbon pole designed by Gary Loomis, from the FIkkes Web site:

“When fishing, the middle section of the Trekking Pole is removed. The handle + lower section of the pole combine into the butt section of the Fly Rod. The other 2 (3ft) pieces live inside the pole while trekking”

Definitely a cool idea with space saving potential.

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Now a little potty talk. We have all been there, you are driving on a stretch of long road where the next pit stop is 50 miles away or the convenience of a clean toilet is just not an option. C’mon guys you know this is a big deal for the ladies. Well here comes the Pee-Wee Urine Bag by CleanWaste. The Pee-Wee is friendly for the environment, super convenient, biodegradable and one bag can handle up to 24 oz. or use the gelling, deodorizing PooPowder for solid waste. It seals well with a tight snap, just be sure not to pack a full bag next to your saw-tooth knife.

The nice thing about this product is you can throw a few in the gloovebox, emergency bag or in any small place. Check out their Web site for more information.

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The last little cool product we saw was an elastomer patch that can be used to repair nylon or fabric. It is called tear-aid and is a super tough, the rep showed us a piece that had been holding together for ten years. We gave it a pull trying to yank it a part with no luck, the sucker held tight. It is designed to stretch and the Web site says that the Tear-aid is good for:

canvas, leather, rubber, nylon, most plastics, paints, aluminum, stainless steel, fiberglass, polyurethane, polyethylene, polypropylene, vinyl and vinyl coated.

I tried a sample on the roof fabric in my car and it may not be the right kind of fabric for the tear-aid because it is not sticking to it real well. We did get samples to try on vinyl and plastic which we intend to put to the test. I am hopeful that it will be a nice addition to my bike field repair kit. And I threw a couple in the emergency car pack as well as my backpacking bag. the Tear-aid is another one of those small items that has many uses and could go along way.

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That wraps up our quick and dirty of the OR show. We will bring more in-depth reviews of other product we came across, maybe even a couple of these items mentioned.

Quick Intro

The Goal Zero 150 Watt-Hours Power Pack is a portable battery device for expedition, base camping and home emergency use. The Escape has an 80-watt inverter and can power devices from lap-tops for a few hours to cell phones and cameras for 150 hours.

The Video Review

Experience

I recently tested out the Goal Zero Escape 150 Power Pack on a 2 night camping trip in the San Rafael Swell.
I enjoyed using the Escape 150 a bit more than the Ranger 350, especially for a shorter trip with the family. And the internal inverter is a nice touch. But the 350 is a killer Power pack (Review to come soon).
The Escape easily chargers at home from a AC wall outlet in a few hours. It can be charged from 12V car adapter (sold separately) and can be paired nicely with a solar pack, then the charge up can take place just about anywhere.

Power out comes in the form of USB, 12V DC and through an AC 80 Watt inverter, the kids loved watching from the portable DVD player in the tent. I charged up two phones and a camera each around 3 hours. I charged my MacBook for 3 hours and I charged a 3Watt Goal Zero nightlight for 6 or 7 hours. The Battery indicator, which shows in degrees of 20 on a small LCD display on the side of the battery went from 100 to 80 then 60. Whether that means I used 20% or 30% of the battery life I am not sure.

The Escape has a convenient handle for porting it around. Though I did find it a bit small for all my fingers, it worked fine and the rubber grip made it a bit more comfortable, but I would like to see the handle ergonomics designed a little better. The power pack also has 3 fuses which are a nice overload safety feature. It weighs 12 pounds, is 18″ tall and 9″ circumference base. It is pretty rugged and durable, the wind was blowing sand like mad for a few hours and all I needed was to wipe it off, though I think some sort of plug cover/protection would be a nice future feature as I plan to take this sucker outside a lot.

I am pleased with the Escape Power packs performance and look forward to testing it out with a solar panel and on a longer adventure. Check out more of the features and details below.

Your cruising to your camping location in the high or low desert getting excited to setup camp and relax for the evening. And when you stop there is nothing around but sand and rocks, nothing decent to stake a tent in. Huge wind gusts are blowing and your about ready to just curl up on the bench seat of your truck. Well, guess you SOL buddy, that is unless you have some real Toughstakes.

Since we are expedition, adventure and offroad loving fools, Tyler and I found ourselves in Moab, preparing for fun, the return of summer and just enjoying the magnificent scenery that Southern Utah has to offer. As those familiar with the Moab area will know, sand is abundant in slick rock camps and that can make staking a tent down pretty difficult.
The Video Review

Tyler and I tested a typical wimpy tent stake in the sand, it went in easy and with a tiny pull came out easy too. Then we pounded the Tough Stake in the sand and pulled with all our might at a 90 degree angle to get it out. The Toughstakes did not budge! There were some areas where the ground was simply too compact to get the Toughstakes in, it really does have to be sand dune type environment for these to work.  We hope to get out to the snow and try them out before it all melts.

The patent pending design behind the stakes makes it easy to visually see why the Toughstakes stay in the ground and actually get stronger as pressure pulls them.

The Toughstakes Website has this great how to diagram. The key is to have 90 degree angles for the stakes and guy wires.

We love innovative and cool gear like this. Every thing that can make the adventure focused more on the experience and less on worrying about gear, the better. Toughstakes definitely fall into the category of reliability.

The big suckers that we tested also worked well as sand shovels when the time came to put out our bonfire. They are great for a boat and I hope to test them out in a snowy camp soon. I will post an update after I get a chance to do a snow test.

Update

The last weekend in April we were camping down in Goblin Valley having a good ‘ol time and testing out some Goal Zero gear. I brought an old Springbar wannabe tent down, that required the heavy use of staking to keep it up. Luckily I had brought down two of the 17″ Toughstakes (the some ones in this review) and we had a sandy location to pitch our tent. I put the two Toughstakes kitty-corner of each other, they went in pretty good though the rubber mallet I used got a bit chewed up from the semi-sharp stake metal. I then had to use about ten other wimpy plastic or pathetic small aluminum stakes for the rest of the tent.

Being that this tent was so old and the wind was blowing 10-30+mph most of the time, the tent got pulled in all directions and all the stakes pulled out of the ground multiple times, except for the Toughstakes which, no pun intended, held their ground. Check out the short video as evidence:

The Good

• Light
• Strong
• Held up to very strong winds
• Love the color

The Bad

• Do take up a bit more space
• They did get bent
• Really does need to be at least semi-soft loose sand, we tried sandy spots that were fairly compact and they would not go in