Gear Review: Blackhawk Advanced Tactical Elbow Pads

I had a nice email the other week from Matthew Milner at PatrolStore.com telling me that he liked my site and would I add a link to his store. In return, he said send me a pair of Blackhawk Advanced Tactical Elbow Pads to review. Never one to refuse free stuff, I agreed. The pads arrived this week as promised so here goes.

The packaging is typical Blackhawk with the big, bold logo on the heavy cardboard header stapled to the cool (and also reusable) ziplock bag. Inside are a slightly dusty pair of Blackhawk elbow pads. Not sure what makes them advanced, guess that would be Blackhawk's marketing department (or possibly the ridge on the inside to help stop the slipping off your elbow). On first inspection, they seem pretty robust and well made. The rubber elbow cap, embossed with the Blackhawk logo, is reassuringly bulky and there is plenty of padding underneath. I've never been one for wearing elbow pads whilst playing airsoft, but I guess a few hefty knocks there would soon change my mind, especially somewhere like Urban Assault where there is plenty of door frames to clout your elbow on. Having been a BMX freestyle rider many
years ago, I know how much it hurts to fall on your elbow, these could have saved me a lot of pain many times over.

According to the Blackhawk website, and repeated on the PatrolStore pages, are the official list of features:

• Substantial protection in a lightweight, durable package
• Non-slip, flexible, molded polyurethane cap
• 600 Denier nylon shell
• New contoured interior ledge prevents pad from slipping downward
• Closed-cell foam padding provides excellent shock resistance and prevents water absorption
• Hook and loop elastic straps

When you put them on, they are pretty comfy and not particularly restrictive. I usually wear knee pads when playing on urban sites, my current choice of pad is the Alta Superflex. they are pretty good but still move around and dig the elastic into the back of your knees, makes me wonder what elbow pads would be like to wear all day. I'll give them a try and when I do, the after-action report on these pads will appear here in the near future. The one thing I did notice when putting them on was that the 'New contoured interior ledge' on the inside of one of the pads was slightly bigger on one pad than on the other. This ridge is there to help stop the pad slipping downwards off you elbow, it's a sort of lopsided foam cup inside the pad with the upper edge (that would go around the top half of you elbow) being more pronounced than the lower half. I'm guessing that this is a minor flaw in the production of this one set of pads and doesn't really affect the way they are worn and I imagine they will bed in a compact with use, it was just something I noticed when putting them on.

If you want to order a pair of the Blackhawk pads (available in Black, Olive or Coyote) for a very reasonable £16.99 (that's less than £8.50 an elbow, when you get to 40 you'll be glad you did), click along to PatrolStore.com or give Matthew a call on 01737 642 424.

On to the Patrol Store site. I hadn't heard of them before getting the email from Matthew. The site itself seems more geared towards Police equipment with the homepage showing links to a whole host of law enforcement duty gear. When you dig deeper, the site continues on this vein, but if you hunt around, you can find offerings from 5.11, Blackhawk, Hatch and Mechanix and boots by Lowa, Magnum and
Bates. The gadget fan in you will also be pleased to see knives, tools and torches from Gerber and Fenix and weapon optics from Aimpoint & Eotech.

It's always nice to find something you've never seen before and one of my favourite things on PatrolStore.com was the range of tactical vests from Protec Covert Equipment, like this this one. Again, these are exclusively aimed at police officers (the cuff, baton and pepper spray pouches give it away, along with the enormous 'POLICE' patch on the back) and, sadly, are only available to police personnel, but are cool nonetheless.

In summary, I would say that this site is not as useful to the airsoft world as a lot of the tactical gear sites out there, but it is still worth a visit and the friendly introduction I got to the site from Matthew coupled with the swift delivery of the pads can only speak well of their customer service.