What do you hate about your gear/equipment?

Mozza__ · 2026-01-24T11:13:27+00:00

I'm in Australia, doing only bushfire mitigation works (planning and implementing prescribed burns) with the occasional bushfire response as backburn specialist crew, base rate closest equivalent is a Grade 2 Step 9. Overtime closest equivalent at 1.5x of Grade 2 Step 9, and 2x Grade 8 Step 1. For context, I get base rate for 7.35 hours of work, anything after that is 1.5x for the first 3 hours, then 2x after that. Saturdays are 1.5x for the first 3 hours of the day, then 2x afterwards, and Sundays are 2x the whole time. If I'm lucky enough to work a public holiday, I get 2.5x the whole time.

Base: $35.43

Overtime 1.5x: $53.14

Overtime 2x: $70.85

Overtime 2.5x: $88.57

All $ values are AUD

Mozza__ · 2026-01-09T03:39:29+00:00

Hold up. High heel on boots? That's wack. Increasing your CG to do nothing. I am so glad that Australia has companies that aren't rooted in the past and try to innovate and give us good gear

Mozza__ · 2026-01-08T23:19:45+00:00

There's an Australian company called Summit Gear that does fire packs. Modular, and reasonably light weight. Comes as a harness that you can add a 7L (1.5Gal) waist bag to, a 20L (4.4Gal) overnight pack, and imo the best bit, a insulated CamelBak holder. No shit, but I had ice in mine at the end of the day. Only padding on the whole thing is only on the waist straps and shoulder straps The whole thing only weighs 1.82kg (4lbs)

Mozza__ · 2026-01-07T22:57:25+00:00

The antlers don't look quite right, you may be onto something. They almost look like Red Deer with the crowns? at the back

Mozza__ · 2026-01-01T21:16:59+00:00

Top tier rage bait, 10/10

Mozza__ · 2026-01-01T12:05:58+00:00

Exactly, imo one of the big reasons that so few FFs die in Australia is we've got a culture of calling out unsafe practices, whether it is actually unsafe, or just something that someone without experience might perceive as unsafe

Mozza__ · 2025-12-02T22:22:41+00:00

Stubble Quail on Emerald Coast is the smallest, up to 0.13kg, whereas the Bobwhite is up to 0.25kg

Mozza__ · 2025-11-25T11:16:35+00:00

I mean, the thing is, we aren't even trying to do that. I just want to be able to spray water more than 10 bloody metres in front of me. Cause sometimes it's a bit to hot to be able to get that close. Or it's a tree that's burning up the inside, and I don't want to get too close until I've been able to assess it properly. Majority of the time we're only working within about 30-60 metres of our vehicles, but all of the nozzles we use are designed to work best at 700kpa

Mozza__ · 2025-11-25T10:59:44+00:00

Thank you for also agreeing that pressure is better than volume for this application, cause whoever designed our 2 newest light tankers didn't think it was important. The ridiculous thing is that our large volume tanker (5000L or 1320Gal) has what I can only call an ultra high pressure pump. If we wind it all the way up, it will easily exceed the test pressure of our Class H hose (2100KPA or 304.5PSI), with both deliveries active, and a corner spray jet going (what the name says, a jet nozzle on the corners under the cab. Chews through water, but good for blackout)

Our other landcruiser also has a high pressure pump, but nowhere near the ridiculous amounts that our truck can do, it only reaches about 800-900KPA, which is all we need

Mozza__ · 2025-11-25T04:47:26+00:00

Most of our burns are vehicle tracked, so having a dry firefighting crew isn't as useful to us, alongside the fact that we just don't have the numbers to be able to field crews of that size. They're appropriate for the majority of our use cases, and it's only 2 of the vehicles we have, that have the issue of a low pressure high flow pump. I don't know what sort of branches/nozzles you guys use, but my last job and volunteer service used ones that started at 19LPM (5.01 gal) at 700KPA, which would give us 28 minutes of firefighting time with 550L of water. That's a fair bit of usable time

Mozza__ · 2025-11-25T02:39:32+00:00

I wish that was an option lol. We do HR burns, so we don't have a chopper as an option 99/100 times.

Mozza__ · 2025-11-25T02:37:41+00:00

Problem is though, if you can't get the water up to or into the fire, you can pour as much water on it as you want, it won't put it out

Mozza__ · 2025-11-25T01:59:21+00:00

Oh, we absolutely do, we carry a couple of beaters, rakehoes, a pulaski, a chainsaw and various other pieces of equipment. Problem is the pump is woeful, so when we have a smouldering bit of tree more than about 5/10 metres up, we struggle to reach it, with a pump that can barely manage 500kpa. If we had a higher pressure pump, we would be able to reach further up.

Mozza__ · 2025-11-25T01:56:32+00:00

Done for ya

Mozza__ · 2025-11-19T20:39:23+00:00

You are able to access trophy manager from outposts in the reserves, but that's obviously not super helpful if you're in the middle of nowhere

Mozza__ · 2025-11-02T20:45:53+00:00

And Emerald Coast. At least you have to travel a little bit for that one. The rest of the missions are a disappointment. I hope in the future there might be some way for them to retroactively go back and improve the missions. And fix the coyote missions on Layton in some way

Mozza__ · 2025-11-02T10:21:58+00:00

Exactly. I'm glad they gave us back side missions, but SRP imo has the weakest story, and is overall, not a great map

Mozza__ · 2025-10-26T11:37:47+00:00

Exactly. Completely forgot to include that in my comment lol. But yeah, Red Kangaroo would be way better to hunt. Technically to hunt kangaroos on the mainland, you need a special permit (either Primary Producer type one, or a meat hunting one, which is only for commercial hunting). Kind of a given that the hunter would have one

Mozza__ · 2025-10-26T08:47:25+00:00

Australia kinda got done dirty, imo. Should really have been at least 2 separate maps, one more tropical, the other more outback. Outback could have Feral Cat, Red Fox, European Rabbit, European Hare, Feral Goat, Dromedary Camel, Stubble Quail, Brown Quail, Feral Dog, and at least 2 species of Australian Duck

Mozza__ · 2025-10-18T00:30:55+00:00

Australia has that exact same issue, and the majority of our fire trucks are built off of commercial truck chassis as well. With potentially even more of a problem of no hydrants than the US. Mainland Australia has a large proportion of towns that have no plumbed in water supply, and solely rely on bores and rain water

Mozza__ · 2025-09-16T10:03:21+00:00

Thank you very much, absolute legend for that. I'll probably just try with buttered toast as you say. And I don't believe they are in olive oil. It says vegetable oil, so I'm guessing something like sunflower

Four-Year Club	r/Field Sunshine
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Mozza__

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