I´ve just finished completely overhauling my good old pack. At the time when I was deployed as a Police Officer, it looked like this:
I successfully went for SWAT afterwards emulating the Docking Bay 94 "Tuck´n Roll" Captain... but I always trooped on events wearing my pack, I just didn´t feel like a real Sandtrooper without it.
As time passed, I upgraded the Syphon and changed Gordon´s Syphon for a more accurate RWA one but that was about it. But I always felt that my pack was lacking in accuracy. Now I have changed that. The frame was a Karrimor from the beginning but it was missing the bend, so the parts weren´t alligned perfectly, consequently I bent the hell out of it.
The seedtrays came from ToscheTrader and were originally held together with tiny screws, which wouldn´t work for a SWAT level build. I orderes some of Ross´s Seedtrays which are slightly more accurate in size but the Tosche trays had some different details which I actually liked, so I kept them, filled up the holes with sludge and repainted them. The upper trays are now glued together using E6000. For the lower ones I wanted to have the gap and the tape, so I had to come up with a solution. I used aluminum, bent it to the right shape to be able to fix the lower trays to this frame. It is actually very sturdy. Took the idea from my buddy Knopi, thanks mate!
I didn´t like the shape of my original exhaust port, so I scratchbuilt a new one from wood and tubes found at my local DIY store and gave it that curve in the tube.
Here´s a nice reference pic of the exhaust port:
I also reworked my radio as the pleather surround originally had a gap at the bottom and the feet weren´t correct as well, so took doorstoppers from the DIY store and a made a new pleather surround without the the gap to make it look seamless. I also messed up the position of the large plug on the right side in my first attempt, so I fixed that too.
Also painted my Brexton Box to match the paint overspray seen on screen and redid the mounting brackets for my original vintage Gio´Style canteen.
I also added a bottle with a larger diameter at the bottom:
At the time more and more people were adding the red canvas strips to their packs and thanks to another friend who is also working on his pack, I could get these (just love them):
So here are some more reference pictures of the pack as seen on and off screen:
After getting everything alligned correctly, assembly, adding the tape some paint details on the mortartube to emulate the glueresidue and some more subtle weathering, my "new old" pack looks like this:
As I have my new helmet and blaster ready and also almost finished reworking my armor and weathering, I will probably soon be applying for SWAT... again.