Outskirts Overland Podcast

Trail Gear 101: Why Your Expensive Gadgets Might Just Be Expensive Paperweights

• Charlie Racinowski

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We dive deep into the critical importance of truly understanding your overlanding equipment before you need it in an emergency situation, focusing specifically on winches, recovery gear, and first aid supplies.

• Proper winch installation requires accessibility to controls and free spool functions without obstruction
• Many overlanders prioritize aesthetics over functionality when installing gear
• Radio channels above 16 provide higher power and better range for trail communication
• Never run compressors through cigarette lighters—they'll blow the fuse
• Understanding water storage in freezing conditions requires proper techniques
• Recovery equipment like soft shackles must be configured correctly for safety
• Testing your gear at home before trail use is essential for building competence
• First aid equipment requires proper training—tourniquets, splints, and trauma gear can cause harm if used incorrectly
• Professional training resources include Ozark 4x4 (Jason) and Switchback Outdoor Safety (Aaron Paris)
• Practical winch knowledge includes managing vehicle position and brake tension during recovery


Speaker 1:

The. The subject today was brought from another listener in regards to knowing your gear, like getting familiarized with your gear, not just buying gear and running out or having gear on your vehicle that you don't know how to use. It was specifically brought to my attention from them about winches were the disgust. So hey, you're going to put this winch on to make sure you know how to use it and I thought I'll talk about winches a little bit. When I installed my winch I got a bumper that's accessible for a light bar, but it's got a big enough access. I did not put a light bar in, but it's got a big enough access to where I can reach my hand in to get to the winch To not only turn on the control box for wireless or wired winch control, but also I can click it to free spool. So there's usually little knobs so you can click it to free spool. So there's usually a little knob so you can click it to free spool. I actually all these people that put these light bars in front. You can't free spool, like that's on the physical winch, so you can't click your winch into free spool if you got a light bar there and freak in front of it. So I don't know if people just kill their batteries, like letting the winch line out the whole entire length that they need, I don't know. But yeah, making sure you know how to use your gear and making sure you're setting it up appropriately, not just for looks. A winch is a piece of gear that is functional, extremely functional, to the point to where, like you, should be able to use it functionally. So, just knowing your gear, I'm trying to think of all kinds of different things, but essentially your radio, midland radio. Know how to work your Midland radio. I see people that I go on trail rides with often and they're like not guys I go with necessarily often, but I have been with guys and they're like oh, channel eight, and I'm like you know that that's a lower powered channel. Right, like you got to get above. I think it's 16 to be on a higher powered channel, to be using the capability of your radio for range and clarity and different things like that. Also, learning how to program your radio.

Speaker 1:

Know how to use your stuff. Don't just have it and assume it's going Like in this hobby you don't just buy stuff and it comes how you want it. Okay, there is a learning curve to some of it, airing down your tires. Get equipment that you know how to use, whether it's a quick deflate or some multi-tire deflate, inflate deflate. You get a compressor the amount of people I've seen that try to use a portable compressor and their cigarette lighter guys. That's going to blow the fuse on the cigarette lighter 10 out of 10 times. It comes with little clips to put on your battery for a reason and it really needs that Much like your winch. Your winch isn't going to work outside of being hardwired to your battery. It has to be.

Speaker 1:

So this is a good topic and I don't often these are. I'm asking people for this topic because I don't often think about these topics. But yeah, knowing how to use your gear, knowing your gear's capability, knowing how it'll work appropriately. Don't just trust everything you see online, because a lot of that's a commercial. Even on YouTube, the people you follow it's a commercial, they're putting it out, so you know. Another instance is knowing your gear.

Speaker 1:

A lot of guys try to run diesel heaters on power stations, power banks that can't support the initial pulse to start the diesel heater. Know the specs of your power stations. Know the capabilities and shortcomings of your things, power stations being one of them, batteries being one of them. Just in general, how to mitigate those problems? Learn about insulation techniques for certain things so they don't freeze. Even and I hear it 50,000 million times people bring water freezes. It's going to break the receptacle, it's going to break the thing it's in If it freezes and it's full, even your mat even, like when I have water in my roto packs. But understanding ways to whether it's keeping it well ventilated or people will be like oh, just keep it in the truck. The temperature is going to get below freezing in the truck. Unless I let it run with the heat on all night, one hundred percent stuff can still freeze. Being inside doesn't change that. It's six degrees outside and it's going to freeze in the vehicle. That does not change it. Old homeboy with the built 200 right there showing props, people around here know all right, whatever. Anyways, I appreciate that.

Speaker 1:

And so just making sure you know about your gear, not only that, your setup, it's nothing's worse than getting out and being like I have no idea how this works. But also you might have friends. I got my first midland radio and I'd handheld motorolas for a long time. I got my first midland on 22 and my friend tyson I like, knew how to hook it up but he helped me program it and, like you could change the colors the way you want it and stuff. But I had a friend help me but I also bought it at an expo. Had I not bought it at an expo, I wouldn't be at the expo figuring it out. I would have done some digging myself, watched some videos, learned from some folks about gear myself.

Speaker 1:

So just knowing your gear winches, soft shackles are a big one. If you watch anything on shackles and I'm not a recovery guy, I'm not going to act like I have all these things I always revert to Ozark 4x4, jason. But when you have a soft shackle, what he taught me is you want the ball of the soft shackle in the middle. You don't want it on one end or the other end, so you want it in the middle. So if you're looping through something like this, you want that ball right in the middle, like where my two fingers are coming together. So that's what's going to be the strongest and the best failure point, like for safety reasons, things like that. You want to know them, because if you don't know them, in that instance that can be dangerous. You're pulling somebody off a cliff and you got a lot of cliff. That's dramatic. But you're pulling them off a hill or obstacle or something and your soft shackle breaks and all that tension releases. That's super dangerous.

Speaker 1:

Knowing how to use snatch blocks whether they're the aluminum ones or not, knowing how to double your winches capacity by looping back through, like you could go through something and then back to a recovery point on your truck or whatever you have and double your winches capability that way. Knowing how to pull things, like with a snatch block at angles and different stuff, like if it's not easy to get to and you've somewhat got a right angle. Knowing how to do that like that, education is super important and you can gosh, I don't even know. Maybe I'm the weirdest guy ever, but I will. When I'm trying to learn about stuff, I set my camp stuff up in the yard first get familiarized with it before I'm using it. I've winched in my yard to learn different techniques. I've learned to test different techniques. I've learned you can always make a tree, your car, the recovered vehicle, to learn how that all works and test different ways of hooking stuff up and using it.

Speaker 1:

Also, tensioning your winch Don't ever just put your winch cable in hand tight. There's appropriate ways to do that with tension. Also, when you're dealing with a winch, you don't ever want to hold it to go hand over hand when it's going back in. There's a reason for that. There's reasons for all these things Knowing how to use your gear, how to maintain your gear, what your gear does, what it's capable of so you're not always under utilizing it.

Speaker 1:

Or knowing what it's not capable of, so you don't just assume it's going to overperform. Or knowing what it's not capable of, so you don't just assume it's going to overperform. You can't just assume I bought this thing, it was expensive and it's going to be God's gift to gear. Knowing those things is super important. Tent stakes not all tent stakes are created equally Stuff like that, like just knowing what you've got and how to use it and using it. If you buy a winch and you're not somebody that needs a winch, that's an expensive piece of gear that could have been spent on something that you actually need, like a gas tank skid, something that may end up being a bigger problem for you in a different way. So just know. Again, I don't want to beat the dead horse of this subject. But just learn your gear, learn how to use it, learn the proper techniques and get the training that it requires.

Speaker 1:

First aid is the same. Don't just have a tourniquet and never have taken a class on how to use a tourniquet, how to put tee time and date, tourniquet time and date on so that when a first responder finally gets to it the emergency room finally gets to it they know how long you've been tourniqueted. Knowing that putting on a tourniquet sucks tourniqueted, knowing that putting on a tourniquet sucks Like I've been tourniqueted, I think it's worth everyone's time that carries a tourniquet to go to a course where you have to tourniquet somebody and then somebody's going to tourniquet you. I think, knowing how bad that sucks and how hard that is, it's so important and I've done that lots of times you don't got to get your arm chopped off if you tourniquet it for 15 seconds. Now, if you're tourniqueted for an extended period of time, amputation is more or less going to be your option there. So that's just. I'll leave that where it's at.

Speaker 1:

But like I carry a crike and I know how to use that, carry a crike and I know how to use that, I carry splints and adjustable splints and pressure dressings, occlusion dressings, whether it's a, I know how to make. If you get a hole in your lung and it's from a gunshot, stab wound, whatever, how create that pressure again so you can breathe. You're not just sucking for air with. I've done it with Ziploc bags and duct tape. But I have like better stuff than that now that was made for first aid. But just learning some of that stuff and again, only learning it If you have it. I don't think everybody needs to know all this stuff. But if you have recovery gear, knowing the way to use it, if you have a trauma kit, an elaborate first aid kit, knowing how to use this stuff, you know cause you're trying to help people. But you're not helping anybody if you use it incorrectly and they become worse off. So just acclimating yourself with the gear.

Speaker 1:

Some of these things people have made business businesses out of and there's a lot of money involved. I'm sure all the training I have costed an immense amount of money through government contracts. I'm just lucky enough that I signed my life away and deployed twice and had to have this training. So I do know a lot of that and it didn't cost me anything. So I'm not going to act like just throw money at training. It's super expensive. I don't know what it costs. I'm sure it's a lot, but if it's not within your price range, don't carry this stuff Like you know what you're doing with it.

Speaker 1:

That goes for recovery, that goes for first aid, that goes for, that goes for anything Fires, knives like axes. Don't be using stuff that you don't, that you're not comfortable with, familiar with. I cut my thumb off with a multi-tool in Afghanistan because I had a Leatherman multi-tool and the knife folded back on itself because the Leatherman multi-tools don't lock the blade, so it's vulnerable. One way again, I'm telling you guys, I've learned everything I'm passing on to you. I've probably screwed it up. I've been like, oh, I thought that went like that, yikes. So I carry a Gerber multi-tool. Now the blade locks. You have to unlock the blade. So that's, guys.

Speaker 1:

I know that sounds dumb, but don't end up with a sewn-on finger, like me. So just don't do it Like it's, just Think about it. Know how to use stuff, know what it's doing, or you're going to end up cutting something overseas Not overseas, but like me, like cutting something overseas with a lot of pressure. Or was I punching something I don't know and fucking chopped my finger off Like they got it. You could tell it's not without problems.

Speaker 1:

So pay attention to the gear you have. Learn how to use your gear. If you don't have the means to learn how to use certain gear, don't have that certain gear. It's not worth, it's useless to you because you don't know how to use it. If you're going to plan to get stuff, learn how to use it. I think that's fantastic.

Speaker 1:

If you aspire to have a winch or you aspire to wheel hard enough to maybe somebody needs recovered, aspire to wheel hard enough to maybe somebody needs recovered, I would say go to some classes before you even have the gear. Learn how to do stuff before you own the gear. It would be very useful to you. So that's what I got today. Just familiarize yourself with gear. All gear is a little different. I'd be a little more educational. I'm more or less putting together a call to action Think about this stuff before you get it, because there's so many different pieces of gear I'd have, I'd need some specifics to talk about to even begin, and I'm not gonna know about everything.

Speaker 1:

Winch technology is getting better, even air compressors now, like my arb dual twin, they have a brushless one now. I don't know how that one works. I've never even I've seen it in pictures. But I've one now. I don't know how that one works. I've never even I've seen it in pictures, but I've never used it. I don't know what that's about, so I couldn't. But there's stuff I can't speak on. Technology is shifting.

Speaker 1:

I'm very familiar with what I have and if you have something similar to that and you see me out or somewhere and you want to learn some things or go over it, I'll be more than happy to get my stuff out. I'll be more than happy to pull winch line, pull your rig in front of me and show you what I'm talking about with soft shackles and kinetic ropes and how to leverage momentum to move stuff certain ways with geometry and different things, and how that can all work in different scenarios. How you could do a soft shackle on different parts of your car. What if you can't get to a recovery point? They're often front and rear. What if you got to pull a vehicle from the side somewhere? How do you do that? What's that? Look like Things of that nature. Car rolls on its side. How you get back over stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

But I will tell you guys, ozark 4x4 has taught me a lot about recovery. So look him up, jason. He has a lot of government contracts. He works with a lot of the special operations community and I worked with a lot of individuals like him in my time learning how to do those things, because sometimes you use vehicles and you are war overlanding. But he works with a lot of special operations communities. I know the government highly vets people, but Aaron Paris with Switchback Outdoor Safety does a lot of recovery in first aid too, and he was also a Marine sniper. So I know he has made a business out of it and he does it for a living. But he also has the same exact foundation I have. So I would tell you guys to look into him as well. Both of those people are at expos different ones. I think Aaron is doing a high lift jack class at more expo. He will be at more expo for sure.

Speaker 1:

I don't know where Jason will be. He was at rendezvous in the Ozarks last year and you'll see his decal on my truck. I really like him, he's like me, he's off the cuff, he's no bullshit. You know that's wrong. That's dumb, not. He's not a. That'll get by guy. It's all that works and it's good stuff. Aaron is super knowledgeable, but he's just not the same personality. He's a little nicer of a guy. I tend to lean toward the personality of Jason, cause he's just kind of no, that's not how I'm doing it and I can respect that from either way. Both speak from a lot of experience, so I would lean either of those directions.

Speaker 1:

Ozark 4x4 only does recovery, switchback, outdoor Safety, does First aid, trauma recovery, different types of recovery, from winch to tow rope to self-recovery. He's got different classes for different stuff. They're always available. Both of them are Googleable. I got no skin in the game of either of them. I like to support them both. I think they're both great for the community and great resources for us all, just to be safe.

Speaker 1:

So, anyways, get some training, learn some stuff, learn your gear, test it out in the yard, whether you live in a neighborhood like, hook your truck up to somebody else's truck and pull it down the freaking street, pull it in the driveway Just learn how it works. What's it feel like? One big thing before I hop off of here. What I've learned is I like to be out of my truck when I'm winching so I can hide behind it. But there's instances where it's real muddy or it's snowy and I got to be in the truck in reverse on the brake and the e-brake because my truck is going to pull toward the thing. That's not what we want. I don't want to pull my truck toward the recovery, I want to pull you out. So just learning like you are going to learn it Eventually, you probably learning it in your yard and understanding what that tension is is super important. So I would really challenge everybody to go test your stuff.

Speaker 1:

Buy spares, buy extras If it's first aid. Learn, take some stuff apart, learn how it works. Man, maybe I'll try. Yeah, aaron's always going to have soft splints with him. It's the best splint, or soft splints, soft tourniquets with him, sof, usually at expos. I would encourage all of you guys to not only buy one. Ask him to show you how to use it. He will do it right there at his table. He's passionate, just like I am. We don't want people dying. So he'll show you how to use that tourniquet right there. So do that. I think it's extremely valuable stuff to know. Anyways, that's it. That's what I got for you guys today. Have a good day, have a good Wednesday. Go listen to me and Benji on Opinionated on Newfound Overland.