French ARFA Gas Mask

hello so in today's video we are going to look at the French a RFA gas mask or respirator now I'm gonna say that name at the beginning cuz I'm gonna probably forget it for out the video because it's one of those masks that has a name to me that just doesn't stick in my brain very well so he actually comes and I think a really nice half a sec some people apparently don't like this bag but I really like it it's a Velcro one that does up he's got bits on each side and then there's the mask now apparently this is the French Foreign Legion variant because it's in sort of a tan rubber but we'll get onto that in a second because I don't know if that's actually necessarily true or if they just made versions of this in yellow sort of this color yellow brown and in the sort of dark green black color because from what I kind of guess is that they made two color variants of the mask depending on if it was expected to be used in a desert country also of a woodland location so we'll go into this mask a bit a lot of you be very familiar for this mouse because it's the master polish mp5 there's a licensed copy of there are some slight differences between them some imagine quite major but anyway so just say your the substrate interesting there's a dragger filter in there as this one still see order put this in my filter drawer in a minute yeah bottom of the bank there is a piece of plastic like this which is to keep the shape of the bank as if you wanted the bag to fold up smaller you take that out if you want it to the bank to retain its shape which I think the bottom and that just keeps the shape of the bag I'm crushing in on itself which is actually quite a good feature so here we go here is the French hey did I say it was so yeah if you're familiar of the mp5 you'll be familiar with this mask so it's got the voice diaphragm at the front they're fairly decent voice diaphragm it's got your exhale valve on the side there you've got your drinking tube connector under there or have a nice little rubber thing that covers it drinking tubes actually are quite good on these series and masks and you've got your filter and take their 40 millimeter NATO so that's the inside of the mask so as far as I'm aware this mask has a lot of the similar problems the mp5 has as in clouding sort of milking whatever you want to call it - the lenses where they become discolored over time but overall that's what Mars looks like inside now compared to the mp5 is something quite strangely so I'll show you in a minute and I'm not sure if this is a deliberate design choice or it's where you know like the rubbers not aged well over time bits this mask feel a lot more firm and hard plasticy you hear me tapping on that than the mp5 does so the point I can't work out if this is just the rubber is aged horribly or if this is on purpose design choice now if it's an on purpose design choice the obvious thing would be that it's the mask would stay solid which you kind of want with a mask they're not going to bend in the problem is it's quite uncomfortable to have a mask where bits of it are just like a solid hard plastic rather than soft rubber so we will compare the two some advice on so there is a Polish mp5 and here is a French áifá so as you can see they're pretty much identical other than the color in terms of stuff like that the voice diaphragm cover is different on each one looking on the inside of the mask they're actually both the same and there I thought the Tissot tube system may have been different but is actually identical but what is interesting is if I feel the rubber on these so for example like I was saying on this one that feels like plant plastic almost there and half plastic there whereas on the mp5 that's definitely softer over there and softer rubber there so if I was to put them on I definitely think the mp5 is more comfortable now one of the very bad things about this mask is although I kind of like the strap system where they clip-on over your ears is a very bad adjustable strap system I already broke one of these ones and had to put this back together but basically you've got kind of like a weird buckle system that keeps us trapped in place and it's quite easy for it to ping off not very good if you're in the field because then you must so let's put this on so I'm pretty just strapped so it should make a good fit for me there we go it's not perfect but I don't really miss our own with these straps too much in case I break must as you can see my eyes are lined up population so we'll just put myself right with my own mp5 on there this is just the last high school so I love them that's normalized but it should still fit yeah it seems to be pressurizing let's just get the banana oil and we all say if that's airtight oh I can smell it coming through there actually so I'd assume the exhale valve was slightly damaged on this interesting I think the valve sticks that lens isn't everything to seem all right right let's take this one off now undo the mp5 yes straight this was a mask France designed in the 90s because even into the 90s the French army was still using the m51 and the m50 got free variant of it so you can see some pictures of some poor bloody French soldiers where they've got some really over sore heavy NBC gear on in the Gulf War in the 90s like 1991 whenever it was and they've got the old m50 ones on with the oldest bestest filters so they are lugging around these horrible heavy NBC suits but the masks and filters will give them no protection just due to age so yeah they came up with that design anyway to replace it so it has a similar strap system house said to the m51 because it has those ones that hook over back so just try to polish amplify even just see how they compare in terms of comfort and everything okay I would say actually the polish mp5 is more comfortable but again that's just because it's softer rubber the this mask that's the harder other it's rubbery softer I don't know if that's all that obvious for me poking the masks but although I think it's slightly less distorted the distorting of the ver sort of lens on this one although the mp5 my mp5s obviously got a clear lens so let's see if this XL there was the same problem so if like over test it and it's probably before now this one is absolutely fine so I'm I'm assuming that my French one has maybe some issues with the we can easily just to show you but I'll see that's the XL valve on the inside of it there if you can see that but wherever a lot the cover of this actually comes off I don't know I don't want to really force anything in damage the mask further but it might just be the obviously as I always get old there we go so I think what it might just be of this valve is that maybe it doesn't quite close up properly every time yet that's it you can see there I don't know if that how obvious that is that when you peel that back and put it back see doesn't sit flush it's a bit like the problem the early M 50s had with the self-sealing bit so again if you've got a new umbrella valve you could fix that fairly easily I think this works like most umbrella valves you could probably pull this bit now I don't really want to do it but you could obviously pull the umbrella valve out there and just replace it quite easily but yeah that seems to be what the issue is just seems to be due to the age of rubber as you can see it doesn't seal as well as it should do there it would actually help with some of these if they had a bit of something that keeps tension on the edge in there just so when you exhale the valve can open like it's not forced closed obviously their viewpoints having an XL well a bit attention on there so it keeps it kind of retained in that position a bit better so there's that back on there and let's just have a look at the mp5 one interestingly mp5 cover has a bit the bottom to make it easier to pull off yeah exact same valve system on this one but obviously on my polish one it just stays closed properly it's a bit string spring year look I don't know if that's just cause it's newer rubber and it also just could be because um maybe the poles made it out of a better rubber than the French did who knows anyway so these masks are turning up on the surplus market for about thirty to forty pounds now in the UK so how does it compare to the polish mp5 considering that they are armed more expensive the mp5 Wow the mp5 to me seems a bit better just because it's the exact same mass design really except for the mp5 is made out of a better rubber but again I can't completely put that down to the rubber it may just be because this mask is aged it's dried out I've never had a mask dry out and kind of turn into plastic so I don't know but yeah the bag is very good for this at least I really liked the bag apparently some versions the mp5 come with a bag like this is just in green the mine didn't so um you know I can't comment on that but this is a very nice bag I've heard people say he's a horrible bags I can't understand why because you know they are pretty robust they're made from a nice waterproof material this would be a really good just sort of like bag for having on you know like your side with us strap on it if you wanted it just just a carrying bag for something on the Drager filter seems as a production date on here it's an A to B to e 2 K 1 P 3 so technically an NBC filter so there you can see that on there so just to let you know for the people who said asked me about before a back to although this isn't a bat to cap 1 p3 is technically NBC the same buying a vac culture is basically the same thing as buying an NBC filter but what's there a production date okay it says a RSD on there which I kind of find funny because arst them as I asked like you can't be asked but is there a production they understand most of it I'm more interested in just to see if I don't know your how old the filter itself is I can't see one obviously I mean where it says I - in a couple of places is filter could be from 2002 so yeah there you go this that's my opinions on new yeah French a NRF or whatever the bloody hell I said it was yeah it seems alright but there's lots of better surplus masks on the market and this one it looks cool it would definitely be good as a costume mask I think but I'd actually say personally out of feelings of - at least from the examples I've got the Polish mp5 is better I suppose for some people it could be the exact opposite way around where they get an mp5 that ends up being in bad sort of dried-out condition and they get one of these that's pristine in really good condition but regardless is an interesting mask but you know not the greatest design mask in the world but not terrible really to be honest you

Channel: Weaponsandstuff93

Views: 17,590

Rating: 4.9705882 out of 5

Keywords: weapons and stuff 93, Weaponsandstuff93, gas mask, respirator, surplus gas mask, NBC mask, CBRN mask, real gas mask, air filter, breathing filter, Protective mask, French ARFA Gas Mask, French gas mask, French respirator, Polish MP5

Id: fQMjEVkZ4Ms

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2019