After having damaged caused to straps and buckles on rucsacs carried in aircraft holds (and having had items stolen from inside packs in the past) I've started to use a flight overbag to protect the pack and sleeping mat. The flight bag I've got is working fine. Normally, once we arrive at our destination, we leave the bag and any unwanted stuff with a hotel/guest house/friendly shopkeeper in a place we will return to. On our most recent trip to the Taurus Mountains (Southern Turkey) over the Easter holiday we were so rushed leaving our Pension that we ended up taking the flight bags into the mountains. This meant lugging approx 700g of unwanted "dead" weight around. On top of 6 days food and fuel and all the other (beach) stuff we normally leave behind, it made our packs rather too heavy and bulky.
Does anybody have any suggestions for lightweight flight bags? I wonder if they are available in Dyneema fabric? The bag I use is from Canada "North 49 Flight Overbag" and weighs in at 700g and it is quite bulky packing down to the size of a summer sleeping bag. It is big enough to take my Golite Odyssey pack with a karrimat strapped on outside. It certainly protects the pack from careless baggage handlers but it defeats my attempts at light(er) weight backpacking.
Any ideas?
Dave Porter
