What I Love and What I Hate About My Overlanding Gear, Just Some of the Overland Gear I Use

let's talk over landing gear let me preface this video by saying that you don't need any of this gear that I'm going to talk about today just to start over Landing but I love gear I think a lot of you out there do too my name is Roger you don't care about that let's get started I'm going to show you some of the gear that I use and what I love about some of that gear and what I don't love about some of that gear because nothing is perfect except for bacon unless you're vegan or vegetarian I guess so they even make vegan bacon hey Siri you're an Uber to over Landing or just looking to get started go watch this video up here first if you haven't yet in that video I talk about the basic necessities just to start over landing and I don't want this gear Centric video today to confuse you or give you any hesitations to just start doing it all right let's start with the thing that most people new to overlanding seem to be always fascinated by it always seem to want to know more about that's right I'm talking about LED light bars no I'm just kidding I'm talking about rooftops I know when I first started learning about orbital Landing rooftop tends to me seem like people's reaction to air fryers during the pandemic designed to cook your favorite foods at the perfect temperature for the perfect time set it and walk away for perfect French fries in 18 minutes I'm gonna go over what I don't like first the one big thing I hate about rooftop Tins in general is when you gotta go pee at night it's like this big production just to be able to do that you gotta put on your shoes and grab your flashlight or your headlamps climb all the way downstairs in the freezing cold and then have some time trying to eat you as you relieve yourself oh my indeed I'd probably be more worried about those stuffed animals stopping me than real ones anyways I just keep a big empty drink bottle up there now for those occasions and I'm not going to show you one because that's just gross but you kind of get what I'm saying right you got to go downstairs if you forget something or if you're 90 pound Giant Schnauzer decides to hop in the driver's seat in the middle of the night and sit on the horn and it's pouring rain outside but she won't get off The Horn yeah I can't make that stuff up that really happens the next thing I don't like is the lack of space compared to most ground tanks if it's just me in the rooftop tent there's plenty of extra room but when there's two people up there there's barely enough room for anything else at all thankfully the GFC is pretty long for people six feet tall or less so you have some room for stuff at your feet and there are other style rooftop tents that give you a little bit more room but you're still pretty limited over some wedge style rooftop tents have storage Pockets or netting on the ceiling and I've thought about adding something like that but it's still tight up there with two people no matter how you use that limited space so what else about the specific Rooftop tent that I have that I don't love well one thing I downright hate about the GFC Rooftop tent is the mattress I read reviews online where people say the stock mattress is comfortable but they either sleep on a 30 year old hand-me-down mattress at home and don't remember what comfortable is or they were trying to type the word intolerable and got the worst autocorrect ever to say that the stock two inch mattress is uncomfortable it's kind of like saying getting a prostate exam is uncomfortable maybe I'm just bed bougie but it's probably a case of a little bit of both on that very first trip my wife and I ever took with the GFC we woke up in the morning crying for the chiropractor with backs stiffer than dlm steel tube Rock sliders you were looking for a dirty colloquialism there weren't you this ain't that kind of Channel but seriously though I ditched the stock mattress and put in an exped Mega matte Duo the long and wide version no it's not a perfect fit but I'm okay with that yes it does have to be inflated and deflated which does add to the setup and tear down time but a good night's sleep is absolutely worth that extra minute or two to us the go fast campers credit they did come out with their own hybrid air mattress similar to the exped one that I have as an optional add-on the GFC one is a perfect fit and it works on top of the stock mattress but I already have the X pen so I'm just going to stick with that another thing I don't like about the GFC tent well to be fair tense in general rooftop or not they all have the same issue which is condensation and I'm not just nitpicking here I'm talking about a very specific condensation scenario the GFC design doesn't include rain flies and no rain doesn't get in the tent when you have everything zipped up tight but therein lies the problem you have everything zipped up tight and there's a zero airflow which means the inside of the tent is going to get warmer than the outside and you know how condensation works one very rainy evening we woke up early in the morning to what seemed like tropical monsoon season inside the tent there was literally condensation dripping down on our faces that's what we woke up to and it was like 90 humidity up in there yeah that was the same day the dog was honking the horn ah memories there are a couple companies that make aftermarket doohickeys that turn the GFC doors into a rain fly like this Godzilla designs gzilla designs one and I definitely appreciate the Ingenuity however it seems like he would leave the sides exposed quite a bit in windy rainy conditions but I think I'm going to get them anyways just to experiment and see how well they were or I might try to make something for the little triangular Windows myself one good thing about the GFC when you do get condensation is that the floor and the ceiling don't have any fabric so you can just wipe everything down but despite all the negatives I just talked about I still love the GFC rooftop 10 overall why well it sure beats sleeping on the ground in my opinion for one I just feel safer being up there it might be a misguided sense of safety since black bears can stand up to seven feet tall but it's a good height for most other animals but yeah I just prefer being off the ground and a chilly evening seems a heck of a lot less chilly to me when I'm not laying on the ground also I just don't like setting up and breaking down a ground tent and dealing with the dirty tarp under it or having to stake everything down I chose the GFC for a number of reasons I like the idea of the hard shell wedge style tint for ease of setup and takedown and I looked at several different brands before deciding what ultimately attracted me to the GFC was that it's made right here in the U.S not that I buy everything us made nor do I think you even can nowadays but it's comforting to know that we're still able to manufacture high quality top-notch products here when we want to anyways this tent is some kind of design and Engineering Marvel you'll notice that there are no exposed ugly hinges on the front of the tent and then you start wondering how the heck they did that the entire tent has some mind-boggling machine parts everywhere you look all made by good old hard-working Americans right in Montana when I compared it to similar tents by other brands it made some of those other tents look like Junior High metal shop projects with ugly hardware store like a ninja every single part on the GFC can be replaced and I'm not talking about just the gastras I mean everything if one day some Kamikaze bird decides to dive bomb into my tent Fabric and make it be cold or if it manages to smash up the honeycomb compository it can all be replaced but the real kicker for me was that the GFC isn't really all that much more expensive than the overseas manufactured similar tents someone out there is probably going to say that made in the USA and some of the other things I like about the GFC is merely justification for spending the extra coin over a similar but less expensive Rooftop tent or that I'm sponsored I only have like 700 Subs as of the making of this video so ain't no one sponsoring me also try telling me that when you get rear-ended on the highway your rooftop tent goes flying off your truck lands on its roof goes sliding down the highway but gets repaired back to 100 yeah that's a true story look it up right here on YouTube okay it was a camper but the temp part is basically the same thing just without the removable floor of the camper version and GFC was able to replace all of the damage Parts yes at a cost of course but if you try to get an overseas Mass producer rebranded by several sellers even though it's the same thing with top 10 brands that a get parts and then B perform the repairs for you on top of all that GFC pays their people a livable wage even if you never buy anything from them you gotta respect that okay fine I'm a total GFC fanboy guilty as charged well we're still on the topic of rooftop tents if you use one or you sleep in the back of your rig you're gonna know what I'm talking about here leveling and I'm not talking about your World of Warcraft team being in level 70. I'm talking about leveling your rig that's a level baby I don't think anyone enjoys sleeping at odd angles I mean when you're pointed like downhill or uphill a little bit it's tolerable but when you're leading to one side or the other it's not so enjoyable I'm not enjoying this I love the leveling devices that I have and I bet you've seen those leveling blocks before you know the ones that resemble giant Lego pieces I guess they're really more like Duplo blocks if you remember those oversized Legos designed for kids like me who are always trying to put the square peg into the round hole while eating in a moose Bush of school pace and using their sleeve as a hanky and I don't know if they teach arithmetic like this anymore in kindergarten but as a child I would often Ponder by some nameless unknown person took one of my three apples who cares how many apples I have left someone stole one of my apples I don't even like apples that much but it's my apple and I want it back so often topic the great thing is that these leveling thingies can double as wheel chocks too I mostly just use rocks for leveling when it's convenient to do so but I carry these just in case there aren't any Rock Sandy otherwise it's going to be a whole lot more of enjoying this other than the exped mattress a couple of small add-ons that I've done to the 10 is running power up there with a USB hub and I added some LED lighting as well the lights are hardcore lighting light bars they come in a few different sizes are dimmable and have a white and orange setting the orange setting does a pretty good job of not attracting so many bugs oh I also added grab handles on the back and a pad eye so that I can hook a rope to it to make it easier to close the tent GFC designed it so that you can just pull on the fabric to close it but doing it this way just makes me feel better about not tugging on the tech fabric pillows are like super subjective and some people get pretty picky about their pillows I haven't just doing the video she has yet to settle on a dedicated camping pillow I used this Nemo inflatable one but I'm not sure yet if this is the one pillow to rule them all yeah I'm pretty pillow picky too all right I would just use the pillow I normally use at home but it takes up a lot of space and if you've never tried using memory foam in temperatures under 40 degrees Fahrenheit it feels more like rubber gym flooring tile than foam if any of you have a good suggestion for a camping sized pillow leave a comment for me the missus propane and propane accessories hey thanks for the intro Hank in my last video about how to start overlining I showed you the two propane tanks that I use a six pounder for short trips and a 20 pounder for longer trips in addition to carrying one of those two tanks on a trip I also carry a one pound propane bottles back before I get into propane stoves let's talk about another propane accessory we have a propane fire pit for when there's fire restrictions the Camp Chef one we use works just fine but it does consume quite a bit of propane at full blast which is 55 000 BTU per hour on that fire pit a 20 pound tank has roughly 430 000 BTU divide that by 20 so that's 21 500 BTU per pound that means it'll burn two and a half pounds of propane per hour so turn that sucker down the one thing that I really don't like about this fire pit is the amount of space it takes up due to its sheer size and awkward shape from what I've read and heard those ammo box style fire pits don't feel as hot as mine but they sure are more space friendly and easier to pack and this one says 280 000 BTU so I don't know about those not as hot failing reviews here's my camshaft compact firing next to a 20 pound LPG tank for size reference and then compare that to a 50 cal ammo box on top of it but either way I'll stick to the one we have for now okay now cooking stuff in that last video I showed a couple items that I didn't really talk about so let's get into those right now first the stove I use a Camp Chef Everest and it works great when I was shopping for stoves I saw that a bunch of overlanders that are on YouTube use a brand called partner steel and they make a line of stoves called The Cook partner stoves they look nice and all but when I went to look them up and saw the price I had serious thicker shot I thought whoa bro why are these stoves so expensive they don't even have a Piezo igniter on them I promptly bought the camshaft Everest that was less than half the price of the cook partner then one day I'm watching YouTube and I see a guy disassemble a cook Partners though to clean it out and not only does the grill come out like every other stove right but burners come out too which really lets you get in there and clean that sucker up and that's a pretty neat trick but the camshaft has been good to us overall and I have no real complaints if it ever breaks I'll look at the cook Partners again I also have this little UCO flat pack portable grill it takes up almost no room and it's just large enough for a couple people there's not much to really dislike about any of the stuff that I cook on so let's get to the next topic cookware yes you can totally just use your cookware that you have at home but I don't want to have to remember to pack everything from the kitchen every time so I have dedicated cookware for over Landing the fry pans we use are these GSI Bugaboo fry pans and they come in multiple sizes here's the 10 inch version and the 12 inch version and make a smaller eight inch version too and I like these a lot because the handles folder and then I sandwich a microfiber towel in between them just so they don't get scratched up and they nest together to save you a little bit of space so that's pretty neat and they are non-stick so you do have to take care of them a little bit they've held up for us just make sure like any other non-stick pan that you're not using any metal utensils or else not this YouTube Roger but Uncle Roger is going to get on your case hi yeah why you use metal utensil or non-stick pan I uh this pot right here is made by Cedar Summit it's super lightweight and the handle folds it it holds about 125 fluid ounces or 3.7 liters so pretty decent size for camping and in that last video I showed you the little Primus Kettle that we use this one holds about 30 ounces or 0.9 liters and it's big enough for two decent sized cups of coffee in the morning oh speaking of coffee or as I like to call it the most important meal of the day we just do a simple pour over at camp and we use the silicone pour over drippers with good old paper filters these are just easy to use and they're easy to clean and I'm not hardcore enough to grind my own Camp so we just buy pre-ground coffee and I know everyone's got their own favorite brand and favorite bling but if you've never tried Death Wish You got it there are very few coffees that I willingly drink black and this is my go-to a couple other small things that you may not even think about bringing or buying for camping are silicone pot holders they're great for a lot of things these squeeze bottles are super handy for your cooking oils and Chip Clips I like never remember to bring these I'm gonna have to like remember to actually put them on the checklist but I'm always looking for these at Camp when we're snacking oh not cookware but kitchen related this paper towel holder oh my gosh yeah I'm totally getting excited over a paper towel holder but for real oh my gosh it's magnetic so just stick it to anywhere with ferrous metal and you got a roll of paper towels that won't unroll itself in the wind and won't roll away because it can't fall over winner winner chicken dinner okay now fridges game changers bags of ice and Soggy food I will not miss you there are so many different brands and I did a bunch of research before I finally bought a fridge from everything I've read heard and seen stick with the big name brands like the medic ARB angle snowmaster and National Luna for example I ended up with the national Luna 52 liter Legacy for a couple of reasons the first and foremost is Dimensions this model gives me the most capacity with the footprint size I need for my rig and future drawer system plans I went back and forth for a while between the one I ended up getting and an ARB model and a Dometic model but in the end the national Luna's footprint just made a whole lot more sense for my name so the second reason I chose National Luna over those other brands even though they have great reputations too is because National Luna was born in South Africa and they developed their original line of refrigerators based on World Health Organization specifications on transporting refrigerated medicines across the harsh landscape and environment of Africa so if it's good enough for that purpose it's more than good enough for my meager exploits other than sticking with the well-known Brands the only other tip I can offer you guys on fridges is to keep it running even if you're not out on an adventure I read in a forum one time that somebody's fridge compressor died and when they went to go get it repaired the repair guy told them like keep it running all the time because if you leave it off for prolonged periods the oil in that compressor settles to the bottom and then there's like a lot of wear and tear starting at backup that makes a whole lot of sense in my brain so that's what I've been doing with my fridge if you've heard or read anything differently leave a comment for me below I'll tell you guys how I power that fridge and everything else I I use later on in the video so be sure to stick around until the end one of the absolute best pieces of gear that we have is our awning they're great for rain and for shade and if you Overland several times a year I'd consider it a must-have there are quite a few Brands and different styles of awnings out there from the OG rollout to leg kind to the 270 degree freestanding awnings like the one I have they all have their advantages and disadvantage the 270 awnings are super fast to set up but they are pretty heavy and they don't work with every Rooftop tent nor do they work with every vehicle for that battery if you go to forerunners and some other vehicles have hatches that open upwards generally this type of hatch doesn't play nicely with 270 degree awnings my hatch doesn't fully open when the awning is deployed but it opens up enough that I don't have to really duck under the hatch I wanted a 270 style awning for maximum coverage so I was willing to make that Headroom sacrifice another tricky part to installing that 270 awning that I have onto my Forerunner was the GFC rooftop tent itself the latch design of the GFC just isn't 270 awning friendly there is a company out there called Kinsmen hardware and they make a 270 awning with a special bracket that's designed to work with the GFC rooftop tent and the camper version right out of the box but it's a little pricey they look like they would last a lifetime and it's Handmade by one dude in the US but it's almost a thousand dollars more than the one I use which is the big country 4x4 ostrich Wing awning the big one two sizes and I have the larger one that provides 120 square feet of coverage yeah it's pretty big when stowed away this thing measures 109 inches in length so don't try to mount this thing on a smaller rig because it would probably look like you're trying to joust against all the other rigs or something it's called a songs hello it comes with an LED light strip and One support leg for when it gets windy if it gets really crazy windy you can tie it down in every corner too it also has this little tiny leg at the top here to help shed water and they make a zip-on wall kit for it as well I love everything about Dasani except for when it came to mounting it and to be perfectly honest I didn't even think about this stuff when I ordered it when it got here it was a head scratcher for sure it's not just a simple matter of bolting it up to the side of a GFC rooftop Tanner camper because all of the weight is on the pivot point when you deploy and put away the awning and with the GFC rear latch design you can't just bolt up the pivot point to the side of the tent I ended up fabbing and I'm using the term Fabby very Loosely here this monstrosity of the bracket I don't know how to weld so I drilled holes and bolted everything together using steel angle steel plate steel square tube and a GFC Universal mounting bracket it looks like I stole part of the Golden Gate Bridge and painted it black but it definitely works and it's probably over designed in terms of strength I mean it'll take my entire body weight for no good reason maybe one day I'll learn how to weld and make an aluminum bracket that looks a whole lot nicer and definitely will weigh a heck of a lot less than that monster if I'd known about all those bounding headaches before ordering the ostrich Wing I probably would have gotten the Kinsmen instead but being that everything's all mounted securely now I have no roll regrets because I got that extra 35 square feet of coverage with the Oscar swing I talked about emergency satellite communication devices last time and showed you this Garmin inreach mini there are a few brands that make similar devices now listen just get one if you're going to be venturing off grid because that is a precaution that's definitely worth taking now radio communications yes I know my name is Roger okay Roger Roger Roger oh how that never gets old all right so radio comes making a phone call while you're out on the trail or even the highway is just a horrible way of trying to communicate with everybody in your convoy plus you don't even have signal a lot of the time when you're over Landing even if you only have one other vehicle in your group it's just way faster to hit the button on the radio and start talking I than to have to dial them on your cell phone even when you do have signals okay bye not long ago CBS were the de facto standard but people seem to be transitioning towards gmrs now General Mobile Radio Service gmrs for short seems to be dominating the off-road market right now and there are several good reasons why with gmrs voices just sound a lot more clear and with less static generally speaking you get better range and you get to use up to 50 watts of power instead of only 4 Watts with CB oh also you get to use privacy codes too the only disadvantage to gmrs is the 35 licensing fee but it lasts for 10 years and it covers your entire household I use a Midland MXT 275 in my rig and a Midland GXT 1000g handheld when I'm not in the truck the MXT 275 is 15w and I'm not going to comment on the Range because there are just too many factors that affect range but it's more than adequate for my needs I chose the MXT 275 model because all the controls are right on the mic handset so that I could tuck the main unit down there Midland released the MXT 575 sometime after I bought the 275 and that one has the full 50 watts of power there are other brands out there but Midland makes things super easy for the end user and radios aren't really something that I nerd out over so I just stick with their stuff what I do kind of nerd out over though is preparedness and no I don't have a zombie apocalypse bunker mostly because I can't afford one but I do like to be prepared for Murphy in a stand-up log yeah right now bro I'm trying to make a video I carry quite a lot of tools in the event I need to do a ghetto Trail fix or just tighten something up I don't currently carry any vehicle spare parts because I just don't do any technical Trails right now I'll talk more about that topic when I get to my gear wish list later but if saying a tire rod went out while I was on the trail too soon Roger too soon I prefer to have the ability to have someone in my Convoy help give me a lift to buy parts and to do the work myself out on the trails than to have to pay for an astronomically expensive off-road recovery and a tow and then have to find a local shop to do the repairs for me I carry way too many tools to cover this video but my best tip to use to carry the tools that you need for your particular vehicle and what I mean by that is if your car doesn't need an 11 16 wrench then don't carry an 11 16 wrench save that space and wait for something you might actually use if any of you are interested in the tools that I do carry then leave a comment for me below and maybe I'll do a dedicated video on that topic have a way to jack up your vehicle when you need to and I'm not talking about that crappy scissor jack your vehicle probably came with I am positive all of you have seen Farm Jacks before most people call them high lifts because that's the popular brand kind of like how nobody says Cola you either order a Coke or a Pepsi right I don't know anyone maybe I will someday but I just carry a six ton bottle jack for now which is adequate for my needs there's a company called safe Jack that makes extensions and other accessories to make a bottle jack even more versatile I think a lot of off-roaders don't carry a jack stand but if you've got the room to carry one it's obviously a lot safer to use one than not along with tool related stuff let's talk recovery gear I have a pretty limited set of recovery gear right now again due to not doing any technical Trails right now but I do have a pair of Max tracks on a pretty awesome Mount check this thing out this is the Expedition Essentials recovery board quick Mount and it's pure genius forget that lighting up four pins dealio they make a four board version too I also carry a snatch strap a soft shackle and a d-ring just in case I or someone else needs a tug and I haven't had to use any of those yet you've probably heard of bearing down tires for off-roading before and here's what I currently use for that this is a vaier 88p portable compressor and I've had this thing longer than I've had four wheel drive vehicles it works eventually it wasn't really designed for tires this size and I mean these are only 33s it was really meant for normal passenger car straight tire so it does the work just really slowly especially at higher elevation when we were airing up in Colorado at an elevation of about 9000 feet or so I could have written a 300 page novel by the time we were done airing of both vehicles okay crappy nobody wants to read novel and I'm totally over exaggerating but yeah it took like 45 minutes more on this topic when I get to my future plans the one good thing about the 88p is that it has 100 duty cycle so it can just keep chugging along or I guess it's more like sipping along I use that compressor with a more Fleet four-way tire kit which lets me inflate or deflate all four tires at once and it equalizes the pressure in all four tires too and since we're talking tires it's always a great idea to carry a tire plug kit and these Patches by Glue tread that are made for sidewall repairs I haven't had to use the glue tread kit yet but man that tire plug kit I've had to use that numerous times just never on my own rig in the other video I also talk about fire extinguishers and first aid kits and for now I have one of those run-of-the-mill little fire extinguishers that pretty much everybody has but I do plan on getting an element fire extinguisher because it has so many benefits over the old school Kind Plus have you ever commented on that video with his own personal experience with the element fire extinguisher where he put out a gasoline fire in seconds thank you for sharing that story with me Dennis sold Take My Man for first aid just spend the coin and buy a decent kit not something from like a CVS or whatever carrying a tourniquet or two is always a good idea those can save someone's life I have trauma shares some wound sealer powder these wound closures kind of work like stitches I also carry isopropyl alcohol burnt gel and a first aid antibacterial spray one thing you may not immediately think of if you're going to be adventuring in higher altitudes is carrying oxygen with you I brought one of these with us to Colorado and it came in pretty handy I'll tell that story one of these days but it did make me feel like Mel Brooks and Spaceballs if you remember that scene getting old symptoms may include Nostalgia I think you should always carry some kind of Fire Starting toll when you're camping or over Landing just in case of emergencies and you need to start a fire or maybe the Piezo igniter on your stove breaks on you and since I already carry isobutane canisters I have this refillable layer by Soto it even extends and as a backup I always carry a feral Rod too sparkly and just to make your life easier in case you do like starting campfires or like an emergency situation like I said I carry a couple fat wood sticks and this fire starter material called a Blackbeard Fire Starter it's kind of like a fire plug um we'll start a fire if it's wet too so that's pretty cool just a quick public service announcement for the kid of the outdoors Community if you're going to start a campfire you know how to put it out properly it's really hard to count the number of times I've seen people riding The Struggle Bus when it comes to putting out their own campfire one time I saw somebody running through the campground screaming and hollering looking for a fire extinguisher and I go over there and I help get it under control in under a minute with this 10 Harbor Freight shovel seriously this thing is only ten dollars like if you don't have a shovel go buy a 10 shovel at Harbor Freight for crying out loud and stop setting all the places we all like to go on fire rant over so here's something that's relevant for anybody that goes camping or over Landing chairs everyone and their mom seems like they use a hellenox chair and for a good reason they are pretty comfortable for a lounging lean back kind of a chair this one's my wife's and it's a beach chair version I've avoided getting a helinox chair so far because I'm just lazy and I don't want to have to deal with the whole setup and the playing with the aluminum nunchucks action and then the struggling to pull the fabric over the aluminum nunchucks action yeah I'm completely over dramatizing the whole thing but if I wanted to do chores I would just stay at home and I don't want to clean the damn gutters just do it [Music] I saw this brand called click and it looked like their chairs are convenient to use and packed down small so I got some and they are that they are small and convenient to use but comfortable they are not at least not in my opinion look I'm not a big dude I'm 510 and a buck 60. this is me sitting in a click chair I don't know if I got some weird prototype kids version or what but this thing is pretty small feeling and I know it's super subjective but my wife's helenox is way more cozy I think I might like that front runner expander chair because the seating position looks more upright for my middle age back and it's not a space hog by any means but it doesn't exactly fold down that small because the space in my rig is pretty limited when it's fully loaded I just saw that helenox makes this Cafe chair that has a more upright seating position so that might fit the bill if any of you have experience with that Cafe chair or any camping chair that packs down small and has a more upright seating position leave a comment for me my back will thank you I think it's pretty hard to argue against needing some sort of lighting at Camp after the Sun Goes Down And there are a ton of Camp lighting options nowadays I think old school fuel Lanterns have this cool factor and provide this Ambiance that you just can't capture with LED lighting but with that being said I don't own one it's hard to beat the pure light output of modern LED lighting so let's start with flashlights hey buddy I have way too many flashlights ranging from teeny tiny to big floody behemism but the one I always reach for when I'm over Landing camping or even when I'm walking the dogs at home is this Olay Warrior Mini 2 okay I'll bring myself as a technical ninja here if you're using the Tactical light but it's the best edcable flashlight that I've found so far those new flatter style flashlights are gaining popularity for EDC but this Good Old Tube style one is plenty pocketable for me so the reason I like this light so much is because it has both a tail switch and the side switch and with a little bit of bungee cord and you can do the bungee cord thing with almost any flashlight it's always on your hand won't fall off you can still grab stuff with this hand and with this particular light the tail switch gives me momentary access to a Max mode and to a momentary strobe boat and without moving my hand at all my pinky can hit the side switch for a constant output in all of the light modes all right a little less gear geeky is this Claymore heady plus headlamp that I have here and it's probably the most versatile headlamp I found so far you probably know headlamps are like hella useful at camp and the reason I like this one is because it has so many different modes let me show you so it's got a narrow beam and then a wide beam combo beam a diffused red light for protecting your night vision it can and a diffused white light and it also has a couple other tricks up its sleeve which are this little hook so you can hang it up to use and then a quarter 20 thread socket on the back so you can hook it up to your camera gear too so super versatile my favorite headlamp that I found so far it's so wheat and now vehicle mounted Camp lighting I don't use any sort of lanterns because I have some no-name brand LED lights mounted on the hatch and they're bright enough for lighting up the rear area of the rig and knife for cooking hanging out whatever I also have Baja Designs Rock lights mounted in the sherpa equipment company roof rack for side lighting Sherpa makes special mounts for these Rock lights that tuck into the sides of the rack again these offer plenty of lighting at night for doing whatever camping stuff I have those Rock lights hooked up to a wireless remote I had them on a Bluetooth relay switch before but it wasn't reliable in this less expensive remote switch has been Flawless and it's way faster grabbing this remote and hitting the switch than loading up an app on my phone and waiting for the Bluetooth to reconnect the switch comes with two remotes so I keep one up in the tent in case something goes bump in the night and I leave the other one here in the truck both the roof rack lights and the hash lights run off the vehicle's main battery and those lights don't draw that much power but either way I'm not really worried about having to run them for several hours a night because first I upgraded from the standard lead acid battery to an AGM battery and secondly I have this 80 watt solar panel on the hood here for trickle charging the AGM battery so as long as they're sudden I'll basically never run into a dead battery situation the solar panel is made by lens on solar and they package it either with or without this waterproof mppt solar charge controller for powering and charging everything else like the fridge or the lights on the awning and the Privacy tank or that USB hub up in the rooftop tan or like whatever else I need to charge I use this blue Eddy ac200 max power station there are some great videos here on YouTube that review the performance and all the details on this thing so I'm not going to go into depth on this piece of gear in this video If you're not familiar with these power stations it's basically just a giant battery with a bunch of outlets on it and different ways to recharge it if you do know about these things the blue Eddie model I have is a 2000 watt inverter 2048 Watt hours of Total power and it'll take up to 900 watts in solar input I have two 100 watt solar panels on top of the tech it's got two charging inputs so for my setup while I'm driving it could be charging from the vehicle's alternator and from the solar panels at the same time and of course you can just plug it into an AC outlet to charge it up as well if you need to and it's also expandable so you could have up to eight thousand one hundred ninety two Watt hours of Total power with two of their extension batteries if you really needed it for some reason I mean that's like emergency home backup status yeah this thing is like way overkill for my current needs and I thought about doing like your normal like dual battery on board setup on the rig but I didn't want to have to piece together my own system and have to figure all that stuff out or buy like a way too expensive for me a red Arc setup and that red art stuff looks super sweet but it's like way too powerful for me and there's a bunch of features on them that I'll never use on my current rate as long as I've got the ability to power a rice cooker on those long trips I'm good what I'm Asian and I need my rice okay all right this video is getting long so let's get to future plans and wish list items not in any particular order my Forerunner doesn't have the factory Toyota rear electronic differential Locker if you don't know what that is it's basically a device that helps you maintain Traction in situations where you lose traction particularly when you have one rear tire off the ground it would take a while to explain the mechanics of what it actually does so if you're curious I'll leave a link to another video down in the description below that does a way better job explaining it than I ever could anyways with no rear e-locker and having open discs front and rear I tend to stay away from trails that are known to require lock a few student viewers out there who've seen any of my other videos have probably noticed that I don't have a winch either so I can't even pull rope to recover myself right now to me going on a trail where I know I'm going to get stuck and I don't have lockers and I don't have a winch would be like trying to do your taxes on the paper forms for The Adventurous experience I mean why do that to yourself so glutton for punishment Trails or moderate but still have a good time I'll take moderate but still have a good time Trails for a thousand Alex that is until I had Lockers in a winch so I do plan to add front and rear Locker sometime in the future and I'm kind of leaning toward the hair up e-lockers because installation would just be a lot more straightforward and simpler without having to run Airlines or having an onboard air compressor also I don't ever plan to do any hardcore wheelie in this room maybe I'll change my mind and just go with ARB interlockers and with lockers comes re-gearing because the discs are going to be disassembled already anyway I know I only run 33s right now but they are dang heavy 33s and I do plan to tub the firewall and go 35s in the future so I'm thinking 529 gears but I do a lot of highway driving to get to places everything I ever read always says go with 529s when you're running 35s but maybe 488's would be better in my situation I don't really know I guess more research needed front and rear bumpers are on the list as well because I would feel a whole lot Cozier having a winch and a spare tire full skid plates maybe later later down the road and to kind of wrap up vehicle related stuff supercharger and you Toyota homies out there probably know what I'm talking about at least with the older Toyota trucks my rig is slow it was slow and it was stock it's even slower now with stock 410 gearing with 68 plus pound 33 inch tires that's as heavy as some 35s and then you got all the over Landing weight plus my wife and two dogs my poor 400 probably feels like one of those motorcycles in Southeast Asia you know overworked and underappreciated like mostly you good folks out there I think my truck deserves a promotion and that will come in the form of a Magnuson supercharger in the future if any of you have any experience with 3rd gen 400 gearing lockers or the supercharger let me know your thoughts in the comments below all right back to the more like Universal over Landing camping kind of gear if you've seen any of my other videos you probably know that I'm a total voice with chilly weather well chili for us because you know we're from California look at us it's not even cold out and we're bundled up like it's like it's like freezing or something because we're California weather wussies and it's kind of like super coincidence that I'm filming this segment of the video right now because somebody from Northern Alberta just left a comment for me and I can't even imagine like being out there like the temperatures that he was saying like I would die for sure for temperate California weather ruined me I mean there's plenty of other like actual stupid things about California but I'd be renting one for days to the topic you've probably heard of diesel heaters before but there's propane heaters also and I'm not talking about those Mr Buddy heaters these are propane heaters that work just like the diesel ones and I already carry around propane for stuff anyway so I'd rather do that than have to carry around an extra container of diesel fuel yeah what basto makes a gasoline heater but that would either require hard mounting it somewhere inside my vehicle or fabricating some kind of weatherproof case and that's a lot of work when propex makes the hs2211 propane furnace these are made for exterior use so all you need is a temporary place to mount it when you are using it and I'm thinking about moving that Roto packs off the side of my truck and putting that there when I do need to use a heater I've also read that the propex furnace is a lot less finicky than diesel heaters at higher elevation having that propexator is going to allow a weather wuss like me to actually do some winter landing and Snowboard Landing without being completely miserable in the cold some of you may have seen the Privacy 10 on my rig in past three that we use for changing and going number two well it's really made for showering but I don't have a hot shower setup right now there are a bunch of different ones out there already but none of them have really stood out to me and said bye me I've been considering the Mr Heater boss series one because I like that form factor with the water tap in addition to the sprayer hose if you guys have a suggestion on a hot shower setup that's worked really well for you leave a comment for me below you remember the way too slow portable air compressor that I talked about earlier yeah that needs to go everyone always recommends the ARB twin compressor but it's expensive several people have been reporting great results with this Napa air compressor that is very attractively priced but it's like permanently not in stock status and then I've seen this easy plate one that looks like the same exact thing as the Napa one for 100 bucks more so if any of you have any input on that Napa compressor or the easy flight one or something similar to that that's reasonably priced leave a comment for me because I really don't want to drop Six bills and change on that ARB one Wow way longer of a video than I thought it was going to be or ever intended it to be so much for brevity half of you are probably asleep on your couch right now and if so enjoy your nap courtesy of me as always thank you all so so much for watching commenting and subscribing I hope you'll join me for the next one which is going to be all about Overland trip planning and using Gaia GPS I'm calling it Overland trip planning 101. what's your best practice when it comes to Overland trip planning leave a comment for me below and if it's something I never thought of I'll try to include it in the next video so we can share it with everyone while you're out adventuring always remember because the Nations don't matter the journey matters this is Roger over and out hit that thumbs up share the video with a friend subscribe up here and my dog's knocking on the door [Music]

Channel: GGG4Runner

Views: 41,524

Keywords: vlog, overland, ovelanding, camping, outdoors, nature, 4Runner, mental health, depression, the great outdoors

Id: _0CjmnfbtjA

Length: 37min 54sec (2274 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022