Pilot Products: Dueling flight bags

The top-of-the-line Sporty’s bag is an $80 exoskeleton in which padded pouches specifically made for a headset, radio, smartphone, and ADS-B receiver or portable GPS are placed along the outside. Pilots don’t have to dig around inside the main center compartment for the items they’re likely to use most.

Sporty’s first offered flight bags 30 years ago, and this year’s models (there are six) include redesigns based on customer feedback. All include stronger, more water-resistant fabric; high-contrast interior colors to make items easy to find; pockets made for iPads and charging cables; sturdy zippers with fabric pull tabs, and lined interiors to prevent screen scratching.

“As pilots ourselves, we trust other pilots to tell it like it is when it comes to our products,” said John Zimmerman, a Sporty’s vice president. “Good, bad, but rarely indifferent, customer feedback is combed over to see how our products can be improved, and that’s certainly true with Flight Gear.”

Flight Outfitters’ new Seaplane Duffel bags are meant to store everything inside a cavernous, water-resistant center compartment. The black bags come in two sizes, 40 and 60 liters (consider them large and extra large), and they are designed to keep clothes, camping gear, or anything else you can fit inside them protected and dry.

Flight Outfitters says its seaplane duffels are made for austere conditions likely to be found on “remote fishing trips, cross-country flights in old taildraggers, and any other adventures you can dream up.”

Access to the center compartment comes via a heavy duty, U-shaped zipper with a storm flap meant to keep water out.

Prices are $50 for the 40-liter model, $70 for the 60-liter version, and $100 for one of each (one can be rolled up and stored inside the other).

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Sporty’s barf bags

Making a bad time a little better

Feeling nauseated in an airplane is miserable. But getting sick is even worse. That folded garbage bag doesn’t help and, oh, my, the smell can take out everyone on the airplane. Sporty’s has introduced the Better Barf Bag, designed by pilots.

Constructed of thick, heat-sealed plastic, the bag seals in the liquid with a zippered, leak-resistant top. The 2.5-inch gusseted bottom helps to increase capacity while giving the bag a solid base to keep it upright when placed on the floor. The dark color of the bag helps to mask the contents.

“It’s not a glamorous product, but it’s one that needs to be easy to use and effective,” says Sporty’s Vice President John Zimmerman. “Having some Better Barf bags on board is a great insurance policy. They contain the mess rather than creating a bigger one.”

PRICE: $6.50 for 10-pack
CONTACT: sportys.com

—Julie Summers Walker