Before I talk about that, though, I'll talk about the E-11 blaster I got from my squad's group purchase. The Southern California Garrison OC Squad did a gorup buy of over 15 blasters and 15 DLT-19s from HyperFirm/ HFx (http://www.facebook.com/HFx-Productions-1669859386576227/). This allowed us to get the Elite version for a lower cost.I received mine on May 1st, a few days after our squad coordinator received them. Their Elite version has more screen accurate power cylinders (the greeblies on top of the magazine feed), a mounted D-ring (required for Centurion blasters) and a generally cleaner look. Forgive the messy desk in the pictures as I was showing it off to colleagues.
For the ANOVOS holster, it's pretty easy to scrunch the thing by pressing the two lengthwise edges carefully towards center, until the opening is big enough to accommodate the blaster. Alternately, shoving a glass soda or beer bottle into the holster and leaving it there for a few days to stretch the opening can also help. The retaining strap is big enough to easily accommodate my blaster.
Ironically, the troop I went to on Friday May 13th did no allow blasters, so the Elite stayed at home. However, I don't chagrin this. As it is, May 13th is the birthday of Albin Johnson's late daughter Katie, so it was an honor to be able to do my first troop that day, for the kids of Highland Elementary in Norco, CA, for their PTA Country Fair.
In the future, I may make a separate blog for trooping, but I've included my experience from my first troop for ANOVOS builders wondering about the experience, and how my armor held up. Mind you, this was only a short 1.5 hour troop for me, with 1 hour prep time after travel.
I got to troop with my fellow ANOVOS ANH Stormtrooper rookie Teri, as well as a few veterans from the Inland Empire Squad and a couple of members from the Rebel Legion. For the sake of the privacy of attendees and troopers, I took no pictures of the staging area or event, but our wrangler took some pictures of the event.
Teri's a little shorter than I, but I also differentiated myself by using my orange pauldron, a gift from a coworker when he discovered I was going to put this armor together.
Each event is different, and the POC will check with the requesting party to see if there will be a changing/ staging/ break area, refreshments for troops, parking, if blasters are allowed, etc. In our case, all the above was available, but they requested no blasters as the event was at a school.
The prep space was more than large enough for the five of us from the 501st and the two members of the Rebel Legion. Everyone arrived on or just after call to suit up. Everyone had their bins set up to pull out their armor and replace the contents with their day clothes during trooping. It was interesting seeing the different hard armor kits, especially for the guys dressing as Rex and Cody. The Sandtrooper (TD) also had a different kit, so it was interesting to look at the differences up close.
There were also plainclothes members acting as wranglers, who help direct troopers and make sure the troopers are OK (and that unruly kids behave around the troopers!), as well as some plainclothes "bounty hunters" manning the small Star Wars themed jail that was part of the Fair (I had a similar experience being "captured" at Star Wars Celebration by Mandalorians).
As far as my armor was concerned, I had some issues with the head strapping, especially after my bucket took a thump from behind from one ballsy boy, which cause the H&L to separate from the helmet (which required me to duck back into the prep room to re-secure (with the help of some masking tape I brought for any emergencies). Also, the left thigh was actually low, which I dealt with and fiddled with until we took our break, at which time I was able to remove my left shin, un-snap the strap from my belt, remove and re-place the H&L tab farther down the thigh pieces, snap it back into place, and put my left shin back on. It's one major advantage of the H&L system - being adjustable on the fly. Other than that, I had zero issues, and the fan system worked well also.
I had to leave the troop a half hour early to make it to my own kid's school open house, but I had a lot of fun with the troops from the IE Squad and look forward to trooping with them again.
I also had an Orange County Squad armor party the next day, where I polished my thighs a little more. There was a very small crack on the edge of my left thigh where I put some ABS paste to re-create the armor thickness, but it should be easily fixed. Otherwise, I say no significant damage to the armor. Consensus from my squad mates and the guys from the IE Squad was that the thighs looked great considering the shimming I'd done, so I'll take that as a sign of a good repair (along with the comments I've received on FB from the ANOVOS builders group).
To eliminate the H&L issues with the helmet, my next step will be to take out the helmet hardware so I can finally PlastiDip the inside of the helmet after copiously, tediously applying masking tape to protect the parts I don't wish to paint. Once that's completed, I can replace the ANOVOS H&L tape inside the helmet with higher-quality tape, as I actually like the rebuilt harness they included with the helmet. I'll leave that for (hopefully) my next blog update.
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