Tag Archives: Blue Ridge Overland Gear Headrest Pouch Kit

Testing my new Headrest QRP POTA Field Kit!

I love field radio kits.

If you’ve read my “Anatomy of a Field Kit” series, you’ve likely gathered that field kits are a bit of an obsession. [Yeah, understatement alert!]

My field kits roughly fall into two main categories: modular and fully self-contained. My modular kits are ones where components like the battery, antenna, throw line, key, and radio are in separate pouches and can easily be combined to make a complete station before I leave for an activation.

My fully self-contained kits are ones that quite literally have everything needed to perform a park or summit activation in one pouch or box. A good example that I’ve documented here is my MTR-3B field kit.

For more on this, again, check out my “Anatomy of a Field Kit” series.

Vehicle kit

If you’re a devoted park and/or summit activator, I think it’s important to keep a dedicated kit kit in your car at all times. Why?

  • It’s ready to grab for impromptu activations
  • It’s handy in case of road-side emergencies in remote areas
  • It’s always  accessible to demonstrate amateur radio to those who are curious
  • It’s always always there for those times when you hadn’t planned to play radio, but the opportunity presents itself

I always have a full radio kit in my Subaru and over the years, I’ve changed and adapted it. For the most part, though, it’s been located in the trunk/boot and lives with anything and everything else I keep back there. Sometimes, it’s in the way when we need to fill that trunk space with family items for a trip or when we’re hauling things around town. Other times, it’s floating/sliding around freely in the back.

On long family trips, I’ve been known to store radios under the floor, but it’s a true hassle to remove them because I have to remove anything in the trunk before lifting the floor.

Contraband I hid in the car during our two month Canada trip last year.

I’ve always wanted a way to store my kit in the car in a dedicated space. In the past, I’ve tried to make a kit that could fit under the driver’s seat–thinking that might be ideal–but there’s very little clearance under it and it’s difficult to remove.

Enter the BROG Headrest Pouch Kit

Before I placed my initial order for the Blue Ridge Overland Gear (BROG) Gadget Bag, I checked out other items on their website. One that immediately caught my attention was their Headrest Kit.

It consists of a Velcro panel that fits around a vehicle headrest and a pouch (or pouches) attach to it.

BROG caters to Overlanders and vehicle storage/organization is huge in that community. The headrest kit makes a lot of sense: it’s using space that’s accessible, doesn’t interfere with any passengers, is off the floor, and is otherwise underutilized!

The big questions, of course:

  1. would the pouch offer enough space to store an entire radio kit,
  2. and would the kit weight too much for the Velcro back to hold it in place?

I asked for the Headrest Pouch Kit ($47.99) to be sent with my Gadget Bag order.

BTW: Big thanks to BROG for giving me flexibility with this order. Since I had no experience with their gear, I asked that they send me a list of items and allow me to evaluate them, then pay (full price) for what I decided to keep. 

Would it work?

I knew I’d need to store a very small transceiver in this dedicated pack. A few could potentially fit the bill–namely the:

  • Mountain Topper MTR-3B
  • Venus SW-3B
  • QCX-Mini
  • TEN-TEC R4020

I eliminated the QCX-Mini from this list because it’s mono band (mine is set for 20M) plus, I really love the field kit I already designed for it. Same for the MTR-3B–the kit I built for it is now time-tested and I love it as-is. The R4020, while quite compact, is the largest in this group of wee rigs. Continue reading Testing my new Headrest QRP POTA Field Kit!