K6-3 review from tacgear.ru and helmetreplicas.net (giant pictures ahoy) - General

First off, most of the photos in this review and information is provided by khemdog (you can look him up on Red-Alliance but I'm going to refer him by name for the sake of convenience) so all props go to him; I'm just writing this because he couldn't be arsed to do so.. but I will let the pictures do the talking :quagmire: [h2]Now off to the review but a bit of an overview of the K6-3[/h2] [SUB](from what I've scrounged up through numerous forum searches and googling):[/SUB] The K6-3 is an improvement/variation over the Altyn helmet, which in turn was a slightly-improved/modified copy of the Swiss TIG titanium helmet (to my knowledge, Soviet copied TIGs also existed and were called TIGs). The notable features of the K6-3 over the Altyn was the lack of comms (although a K6-3 with comms existed as a Rys-T), and a reinforced visor which is the main giveaway that the helmet is a K6-3 versus an Altyn. Basically it's a badass looking welding helmet designed to stop bullets and flying debris that destroys your face. (and searching "TIG helmet" on Google image search will ironically yield actual welding masks :v:) Here's a picture of a realsteel K6-3 with variants [IMG]http://warfare.ru/0702ey70/update/feb2005/4/helmet2.jpg[/IMG] Now an Altyn (note the rough paint texture that the K6-3 seems to lack) [t]http://www.militaryheadgear.com/system/photos/000/009/230/large/Russian_Altyn_Helmet.jpg?1262901373[/t] Now a TIG (note that there were several variants of the TIG apparently but I'm not going to explain that in a K6-3 review) [IMG]http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/310225_1573299109858_1756973386_791426_311530593_n.jpg[/IMG] I have bought my K6-3 via helmetreplicas a couple months ago, to complete my sooper speshal furses rossia loadout, and khemdog was actually the main guy who helped me obtain the helmet as the whole ordeal was a group buy (khemdog however, actually purchased a helmet himself a couple months prior to my purchase, and he only seeked to obtain a couple accessories for his helmet, I will get into details later). Good communication and good quality products was the main notable bits of the purchase. Sadly, customs at the time seized our helmets so our order was delayed by a month. We did however, receive some free mysterious military blue tape for all those taping needs. Now this review will be divided into three sections. The helmet that khemdog received was actually an earlier production variant while mine was a later production model with a couple improvements over the older one, so I will go over the helmet, and then note the differences between our helmet [h2]K6-3 overview:[/h2] [t]http://i.imgur.com/BYjmY.jpg[/t] khemdog's K6-3 has a notable shinier, greener coat of paint on his K6-3 as well as a darker helmet lip. The inside of his helmet is identical to the later production K6-3, and is of great quality. The helmet comes with a liner, which is shaped like a doughnut and is removable to reveal the bare unpadded innards of the helmet Inside of the helmet with the liner [t]http://i.imgur.com/wM6Qy.jpg[/t] Without (the grey circular padding is there because there a bolt poking out; it fell off but khemdog glued it back on) [t]http://i.imgur.com/F8Ial.jpg[/t] The reason for the liner is the helmet itself doesn't weigh very much, however, the helmet visor weighs the helmet down considerably so the helmet essentially presses on to your head, and the doughnut liner keeps it suspended. Without the visor however, the helmet sits high so adding sticky velcro pads for a MICH-type padding helps considerably. You can actually see the velcro bits on the bare helmet innard picture. Visor is removable, and other than that it's pretty straightforward as a helmet. One last thing to add is though, when khemdog played in the rain, the nylon fabric lip actually fell off because the glue apparently dissolved in water [h2]Differences between the newer and older K6-3 offered by tacgear/helmetreplicas:[/h2] Now we get into the interesting part of the review, the helmet I received at a later date considerably differs from the one that khemdog received. First off, the color - khemdog's on the left and mine on the right: [t]http://i.imgur.com/8BLpc.jpg[/t] [t]http://i.imgur.com/GLHrl.jpg[/t] [SUB]Preference of color is up to debate, but the newer one is less glossy.[/SUB] I noticed the visor retaining bits on the sides are actually more bent like the real K6-3 on mine, and the lip is green as opposed to the black one that khemdog has. Mine also lacks the "loose visor" problem that plagues khemdog's helmet, and the visor's top and bottom padding is green and more of a secured ribber spine compared to the noodle looking bit (which khemdog lamented that it doesn't sit in place and goes in and out of the top and bottom of the visor) Here is a picture of the side where you can see the difference between the visor retainers [t]http://i.imgur.com/Rvibd.jpg[/t] Here are more pictures of the visors [t]http://i.imgur.com/1ZGYC.jpg[/t] [t]http://i.imgur.com/nXwln.jpg[/t] Another thing to note is my visor is actually narrower compared to the older version, and it sits closer and tighter to the helmet. You will also notice khemdog put a small piece of rubber to make the part that locks the visor slightly bigger, however his visor still has the tendency to fall while mine has not done so Here are pictures showing the visor's distance to the helmet: [t]http://i.imgur.com/6ELji.jpg[/t] [SUB]visor up[/SUB] [t]http://i.imgur.com/FBpIB.jpg[/t] [SUB]visor down[/SUB] [t]http://i.imgur.com/qEUIi.jpg[/t] [SUB]visor down[/SUB] [t]http://i.imgur.com/SRddQ.jpg[/t] [SUB]visor up[/SUB] [h2]Helmet Covers:[/h2] Helmet covers are also considerably improved, the old loose one (fastened by a string which you have to make tighter... no matter how hard to try and tighten with the string it still comes out loose) is now replaced by a generous tighter (and greener) cover, which is rubber based so no need to fasten with string. It does not hinder the performance of the new tighter visor at all! :dance: Picture of the loose old one (also the main one pictured on helmetreplicas and tacgear): [t]http://i.imgur.com/ZDGaZ.jpg[/t] New and improved helmet cover (not pictured on the main site but you can see it on the Rys-T and Altyn page on helmetreplicas): [t]http://i.imgur.com/mKo5k.jpg[/t] Comes in black and still fits the old version ;) [t]http://i.imgur.com/XwG7P.jpg[/t] Helmetreplicas also sells visor covers shown here, the helmet with the black cover is khemdog's, and the green cover is mine (visor covers can be bought here: [URL]http://www.helmetreplicas.net/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=fsc[/URL]) [t]http://i.imgur.com/61aqa.jpg[/t] [t]http://i.imgur.com/IDiZT.jpg[/t] regrettably, the corners of the visor covers peel away on the newer helmet visors as the visor is slightly longer as seen here: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Wy8DU.jpg[/IMG] [SUB]on khemdog's older one however, it sits perfectly because the visor is the original size because that's what the cover was designed for[/SUB] Other things to note is, my chinstrap actually tore because the visor weighs so much (nothing bad about cutting off that extra length of nylon bits to fix it up) but hopefully this was a localized issue, khemdog never had issues with his chinstrap [IMG]http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/s320x320/485723_3537925058030_1569505973_33074954_1763718099_n.jpg[/IMG] [h2]Conclusion:[/h2] Overall, both helmets are nice, and if you had my honest opinion, the helmet is rather uncomfortable because it's front heavy.... :wink: or I could be used to and babied by my SSH68 too much, but it looks cool, and is definitely an eye-catcher. I like to run my helmet without the visor on field games because it weighs you down because the visor actually weighs more than the helmet itself. Other than the rant about weight, its coo, nothing much more to say; I will post some extra pictures not used in this review: [t]http://i.imgur.com/QAcJT.jpg[/t] [t]http://i.imgur.com/IixPF.jpg[/t] [t]http://i.imgur.com/AvPAm.jpg[/t] [t]http://i.imgur.com/FC0G7.jpg[/t] [t]http://i.imgur.com/S6jiD.jpg[/t] [IMG]http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/552830_205903099520129_952611613_n.jpg[/IMG] [SUB]you can see in that photo, that the visor cover is being stretched on my helmet - I'm the left one[/SUB] [release][h2]Link for the helmet!!!:[/h2] [URL]http://www.helmetreplicas.net/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1516[/URL][/release] if there's any other comments, questions, mistakes, feel free to post I'm open to modify the OP anytime :words:

thumb em, broski

ehh, if I thumb them it'll be kinda hard to see the details; depending on how it goes I may or may not thumb it

i'd thumb them lol or re-upload them at a bit smaller res, it's kinda long i have the older helmet, and i actually fixed the loose visor issue by sticking another washer under the top visor.. locky.. thingy i agree though, shit's reaally fucking front-heavy. but, for Wolverines 3 i wore a hat under the helmet, and i wore it for 7 hours straight without a problem

thumbed images are actually bigger than I thought; all the huge-ass ones I thumbed

the last pic was perfect and then he put an eotech on the AK

looks fine to me; spets people do it all the time apparantly and the visor makes it impossible to aim down anything [editline]31st May 2012[/editline] even then you still can't aim down the ak+eotech because the visor is fucking huge [editline]31st May 2012[/editline] talking about when you have the visor down

[QUOTE=Moose;36140309]the last pic was perfect and then he put an eotech on the AK[/QUOTE] We're all ok with that here. And other minor tactical accessories that make it more useful like railed lower handguards, foregrips and lasers.

I've seen plenty of Russian videos where they had EO techs and AimPoints on their AK platforms and even on their Pkm's