Meet the MkIV. It's almost like the MkII and the MkIII had a beautiful little baby to make this possible. Combining the foam reinforced aperture and thumb break strap of the MkIII with the adjustable interior retention of the MkII, the MkIV is our most versatile holster to date.
Externally, it looks very similar to the MkIII but with the addition of the removable internal strap, it becomes a whole different beast.
The genesis for this one came after a particularly intense firefight which left me down to my sidearm on several occasions. Resupply for my main magazine would require me to re-holster the Hammershot and it was under that intense pressure the slight shortcomings of the MkII began to show themselves. The boxy end of the blaster argued repeatedly with the softer MkII apeture. Use in a MkIII couldn't happen because of vertical drop under gravity.
Post match assessment lead to the light bulb moment of installing a double ended removable strap. No idea why it took so long for this to come up but it did finally and we ran with it.. We made up a prototype without the aperture which roundly failed combat trials so we went with the foam. It holds the aperture open nicely and re-holstering in transitions is significantly better than either of the older models.
We took the opportunity to re-jig a few things around. Following customer feedback, we moved the thigh strap buckles to the front of the holster and split the 50mm into 2 25mm buckles to fix the round the thigh swing that can sometimes occur with repeated re-holstering actions. With 2 25s you can position them either side of a belt loop to lock the holster in place. The prototype picture up there doesn't have this feature, it'll be on the production versions as they start running around.
Eventually, as this variant beds in, we'll replace the MkII and MkIII with a single MkIV Given the only blaster that won't effectively fit in this model is the Alpha Trooper, the Shotgun Holster won't change for that reason but there are advantages to going from 4 to 3 holsters.
The MkIV is available now from our website for £13.50 for 500D black Cordura and £15 for colours and camouflage. Prices include 20% VAT payable only within the EU so US and other non-EU customers will pay only £11.25 (~$18) for 500D black and £12.50 (~$20) for the others but local duties may be due upon arrival in the destination country. Shipping for a pair will top out at £4.70 to Australia, £4.50 (~$7.50) to North America. Lead time is 2 weeks tops, 5 days transit time. :)
You tease, right after I get my MkIII you flaunt this in front of me :p
ReplyDeleteLooks good though, definitely a nice idea :)
The decision to go with the transition literally occurred yesterday afternoon! It's been sitting around for a while but we got a pause in production so decided to run with the final pre-release checks. :)
DeleteI'm proud that the long winded rant that I wrote but never got around to publishing went into making the Mk IV an even nice product for your players
ReplyDelete