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The Air Force Thunderbirds also wear G-Suits. The F-16 has a side stick, so the inflation would not cause any movement, whereas the F-18 the Blue Angels fly has a center stick and the hand would rest on/near the legs. Another minor detail is that the Thunderbirds wear O2 masks and the Blue...
Sporting my new (as of this summer) Real McCoys N-1. Overall - a nice jacket. The one weakness is the brass talon zipper. It likes to jam towards the bottom and not want to either zip up or down, depending on how cranky it is that day. The teeth get mis-aligned very easily. I also wish it had...
First off - the jacket looks great! I could only dream of a jacket fitting me that well. As for the lack of robustness, could that also be because it's just much thinner shearling (by design) than a B-3? The B-3's I've had felt like absolute tanks compared to the Aero B-6 I own, but the B-6 is a...
Got the jacket, and have a few thoughts. TLDR; I'll probably be eating the 15% restocking fee. Since the only other deck jacket I have is a Bronson, I'll compare it to that.
Outer shell
SMW: Dull green, similar to the Bronson A-1 deck jacket. I know this can be considered "khaki", and it may be...
I feel like that’s really the only thing separating them from the top-tier makers at this point, but that last 10% is worth it to a lot of people. Shawn seems keen to continue to work on closing that gap though, as these jackets have improved noticeably over the past year or two. Sourcing better...
Hmm…I’m very tempted by the khaki version. The Bronson N-1 I have is nice, but it’s a tad snug in places, and they don’t make them any larger. SMW doesn’t appear to be allergic to make “western” sizes.
I think the bottom line with FiveStar is that they are more custom that something you’ll get from other makers. The higher-end makers have their contracts, which they strictly adhere to in regarding to matching the materials & hardware of the originals as much as possible.
Five Star offers a...
Frankly, I find the idea of waiting 2 years (or longer) for any jacket, no matter how perfect, to be utterly ludicrous. We all have different life priorities and circumstances though...
This seem to fall under the ever-present debate of wanting something that looks/emulates being time-worn (in this case OD faded to khaki) or something totally authentic. Which in this case would be an OD green that would likely never see enough hard wear to ever fade to khaki for many people...
Welp...I guess the shearling on this was more fragile/brittle than it first appeared. :( Not blaming the seller, as everything about the jacket appeared to be just fine. All I did was wear it to work once. In fact, I actually adjusted the belts out, so there was less pressure on the shearling...