Video Transcript
Plate Carrier + Chest Rig Problems (00:00)
When building out a plate carrier and adding ammunition solutions, whether they're placards, shingles, chest rigs, all kinds of weird stuff out there. Along the process, you may consider wanting to put a full chest rig or simply wearing a full chest rig on top of your slick vest or minimalist carrier, something like this AC1. Now, if it's a chest rig that is Swift Clip compatible, so it has… The harness can be removed and it can buckle into your existing QASM buckles on the front of your plate carrier, that's super awesome. I wish more chest rigs could do that. But the problem with a lot of chest rigs that are larger, that do clip into plate carriers is you will get something like this typically.
So this is ATS chest rig. I think it's called the "Slimline". And so I've got my four mags in the front. I've got my stuff on the sides. And this will happen. I will get all this slop and flop on the sides, even though I have good velcro adherence to the front, I've got my buckles all clipped in to support the weight of the magazines. I have nothing to keep the sides of my chest rig in check.
Now, typically you can take the back strap that's included with these chest rigs and run it along the top buckle or the bottom buckle all the way to the back of the carrier. And that, that does a decent job of kind of keeping it in place. But the downside with those is typically you're having to pick top or bottom and the rest of the pouch is gonna flop all over the place, especially based on how much weight you're gonna have on the pouch. If it's a full radio, if it's, you know, two pouches with mags and like other multi-tools and other stuff, there's still gonna be a bunch of slop.
Fixing the Problem (01:29)
So we created a product to help solve this problem. This is the T.REX ARMS Y Strap. And what this does is this takes the two points of the side of a chest rig, like on this ATS. And it redirects those into one consistent point so that it is going to be pulled equally from the top and the bottom of the pouch, snug to the body. And then on top of that, what we did is… This is created with elastic material, so you can get it nice and tight and still have some breathabilitiy as you're running around and doing stuff. So it's not like most chest rig back straps that you may use for this that are just nylon and you get that nice and tight, and now it can't breathe when you start sprinting and running around and doing stuff. So you have a little bit of breathability. Plus you also have the function of pulling both the top and the bottom of the pouch over the chest rig, into the body, along the side.
Using the Y Adapter (02:21)
So let's go ahead and show you guys how that's kind of set up. So if you have something like an AC1—this is one of the advantages of the AC1 to other minimalist slick carriers out there. If I want to attach a back strap to this plate carrier, and I have my elastic cummerbund all set up, all I have to do is open up the back flap. In this case, I will use the T.REX ARMS Back Strap, which also has a little bit of elastic on it. You could also use the back strap that comes with the chest rig. So in this case, I could have used the one that came with that. But the T.REX ARMS back strap will be placed on the back of the plate carrier. The flap will go over it. So keeping it nice and trapped. And so it's not gonna fall off and, you know run around.
I'm going to attached the Y Strap. And normally what I do is I leave the Y Strap attached here, and I'll usually clip into one side. I'll clip into my left side, like so. So then what I do is I get into the plate carrier from one side. So I'm going to go in from this side, attach the cummerbund underneath. And then I go back and grab my Y strap adapter, which is attached to the Back Strap. Bring that around. Attach that to the chest rig. And now what I have is a chest rig where both sides of the chest rig, you know, the sides that overhang the front of the plate carrier–in this case a size medium—is going to be hugged tight… Nice and tight to the body. And because it's also elastic I'll still have that breathability, which is very important.
Using with Larger Chest Rigs (04:01)
Having something like this is especially important if you're running a larger chest rig with a lot more weight that's going to be attached to it, like this Mayflower, where I can have all kinds of stuff attached here to the side. I've got my four mag, very similar to this. And then this is also a chest rig that wasn't originally made to attach to the front of a plate carrier. It only has this small piece to velcro for, you know, actually attaching. So I'm actually going to rely more on the side, the attachment of the side of the the Y Strap and my Back Strap to actually keep this entire chest rig attached to my body. It's still being suspended off of the two, you know, QASM buckles on the front, obviously. But I'm actually going to rely a little bit more on the sides to keep this larger chest rig with GP pouches and pistol pouches and four magazines and side pouches as well, nice and tight to the body and snug to the plate carrier.
If you have a larger chest rig that is taller, so it's more rows of MOLLE high—such as this Haley rig right here—because the Y Strap is made out of elastic, it can flex taller if need be based on the type of chest rig it is being used for. So it can, it can, you know, spread out a little bit. So in this case with the Haley rig, it's a little bit wider than the Mayflower. It's a little bit wider than this ATS rig, but since it's elastic, that will not be a problem.
If you have any other questions about the Y Strap Adapter, Back Straps, other chest rigs that are compatible with it, go ahead and email us at [email protected].