My Ultimate Plate Carrier Setup | Shaw Concepts ARC V2

Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by the channel. What we're going to be talking about here today is my current plate carrier setup, which is the Shaw Concepts Arc V2. I've used several other plate carriers, everything from the JPC, AVS, Velocity Systems, Eagle Industries, and they're all great plate carriers, but the Shaw is honestly probably going to be my favorite one. And I kind of have this thing set up with a couple of different brands, so my general concept when setting up a plate carrier is to have something that I can scale up, scale down, and then be versatile to any kind of mission set that you may be doing. If you want to just use it for training, general preparedness, if you're in the military SWAT team, this plate carrier is perfect for you. The only thing I wouldn't really recommend it for is that concealment type stuff. This isn't going to be something like a Slickster or the LBAV or anything like that, where you can kind of wear it under a shirt, but this is more of the medium to heavyweight plate carrier setup. So without further ado, we're going to start at the top where I have a Ferrell Concepts admin pouch. That's a good little pouch. It's an admin pouch, so there's nothing too crazy about it. It's the perfect size. It's out of the way of my magazine pouches, so I can access those pretty easy, but I just got a headband in here to keep sweat out of my eyes. I got a paint pen and a sharpie. A sharpie can be used for just about anything, marking patients, making notes, and then paint pen. I generally use these for marking doors inside of structures to kind of let my team know, hey, this has been cleared, or hey, this is a staging area, CCP, something like that. So whatever your group utilizes for signaling, this can be a new tactic for you. Then moving on here, this is just a simple chemlight buzzsaw kit. So I got a green and IR chemlight on there, and I got a couple extras still inside the packaging in the pouch. Then moving on over, I just got my MSA PTT for my comms. Pretty simple, nothing too much really go on there. Then here I got my Spiritus Systems placard with the tent pouch on the front. This placard is pretty awesome. It's very scalable. You can kind of throw whatever inserts you want into it that Spiritus offers. Right now I just got the 5556, and then I got mag pouches on the front of it, which is the tent pouch. It's a great pouch. As you see here, you can throw a tourniquet in here. You can throw M4 mags in there. If you don't want to run anything at all, you can definitely do that, and you can fit all types of equipment in these elastic pouches, which is absolutely awesome. You can throw med shears in here, breaching equipment, gloves, tourniquets, what have you. Whatever you can imagine, whatever you need, generally you can fit right here and keep it in your workspace. Then moving down here to the bottom, I just got a Ferro Concepts mini dangler. It's a pretty awesome pouch. I got a softy wide tourniquet on the bottom, and usually I just keep things like batteries in a theorem cell, or you can throw med in here if that's what you prefer. I did a whole video on different IFAC pouches and different methods to carrying your medical equipment. This is certainly an option, but for the most part, I just use this as an admin pouch for stuff that can't really fit in here. And then moving over on this left side, I just got a Spirit of Systems small GP pouch. At the moment, it's empty because obviously right now I'm not taking this out on a mission or an op or anything like that. So this is something that I generally keep empty for mission equipment, or if I got to bring smoke grenades, flashbangs, you can throw them in here. You can throw your night vision in there as long as you got some protection for your nods. It's generally a good idea to keep an empty pouch in there because when you're out there doing your thing, you can acquire things and you need somewhere to put them, and your cargo pockets can only hold so much. So having at least one GP pouch is something that I like to do on my kit. And then behind that, I have a Shaw Concepts ARC radio wing, which is awesome. It's got the amount of padding, it's got that tweed material so you don't really chafe on it, and it's a nice way to carry your radios. On the right side here, I kind of keep it slick so that I don't impede my draw. But generally, if I need to carry flashbangs or something like that, or smoke, I'll put it right here in this space so that I'm not impeding my draw and it's kind of out of the way and it's still accessible. I prefer to keep those kinds of devices, whether it be frags, flashbangs, on my strong side, just so you don't mishandle them. And then moving on to the back, I generally keep everything pretty slick, but there I got 20 feet of tubular nylon on this side that I can access it, a buddy can access it. So if we need to make some kind of hasty litter or we just need to utilize some heavy duty rope, that tubular nylon is a great thing just to have. And it's very lightweight and out of the way, so I can still throw a backpack, med bag, rucksack on, and I can sit in a car comfortably. So that pretty much covers how I have this setup done. And what we're going to do is we're going to go over to the workbench and I'm going to show you guys some other awesome scalable features that really drew me to this plate carrier. All righty everyone, so now we're going to cover some of my favorite features of the Shaw Concepts ARC V2, and that's going to be the spider system. So typically with a lot of plate bags, you're going to have a fixed shape, and no matter what kind of plates you use, that's the shape of the plate bag you're going to get. I prefer shooter cut plates, and in here I have the I have HESCO level 4 shooter cut plates. I prefer the shooter cut ones just so I can shoulder my rifle a lot better without fighting with fabric from a plate carrier plate bag. So what's nice is that you just throw your plate in there and route your comms however you want to route them. Take the the straps, pull it over tightly, and it'll kind of secure the plate bag to your plate so that you get that perfect fitment. There's no shifting of the plates, and it's honestly a genius hands-down best feature of this plate carrier in my opinion. And something that you can do is you can get these pads here just to add some more comfort in venting. So when you're out there running around all day, you kind of got a little bit of airflow and you got some padding, so you're just not getting torn apart by your plate bags. And overall it's been very very comfortable. I've worn this plate carrier for several hours. Wearing any kind of plate carrier is going to wear down on you, but this guy has, next to the AVS, has been the most comfortable that I've worn. So moving on, we're going to cut over to the rear plate bag and talk about which cummerbund that I prefer to use. All right, so here's going to be the rear plate bag. Same thing, it's got the same spider system, so if you want to run shooter cut plates or you want to stick to sappy plates for your rear plate bag, you can do that and you're going to get perfect fitment on the plate bag. And then I have my Shaw Concept pads here as well. Something that I opted for that wasn't Shaw Concepts was these Spiritus Systems LV120 cummerbunds. These are amazing. The material that they use keeps it rigid and the flexion in them is amazing. It's not too hard to do this at all and you can adjust it on the inside of the rear plate bag. So if you want it looser, tighter, you can go ahead and do it back there. And the tube system is awesome. So far the best cummerbund that I've used. I know there's a ton of options out there. I know Axial Defense makes some great ones. Feral Concepts has an awesome cummerbund system, but these Spiritus System ones, they're pretty amazing. They fit exactly what I need and I recommend them to everybody. I've let several of my friends throw this plate carrier on. They say it's extremely comfortable and I've even gotten a couple of dudes to buy one. So this is my review and how I set up my Shaw Concepts. Plate carrier, just for general purpose uses, there is no specialty role with this plate carrier. So if you are using a plate carrier professionally, definitely consider what your job and role is on your team. This is kind of just set up for a general purpose. If I need to plus up on anything or add specialty equipment, it's very easy to do. And overall, I've been nothing but pleased with this plate carrier. So I appreciate you guys taking the time to watch the videos. If you want to see more content like this, definitely subscribe. We're doing a couple of different series for medical gear, reconnaissance equipment, stuff like that. So anything you guys can do, greatly appreciate it. And thanks again for stopping by the channel. I hope you guys have a good one.