My Bucket is air conditioned

[Dew]

Squirrel fans just don't cool me off enough.. Our robes though are good for more than just making us even hotter; they hide things under them pretty well.

I mounted a couple of hand held air-conditioning fans to a back support belt and used some ribbed tubing to duct the air up my collar and under my bucket.

It has made troops so much more comfortable, however, I can't hear anything but the sound of wonderful cool air

http://fav.me/d52rx42
http://fav.me/d52rwwv

The second picture has them against a white shirt so you can see what is going on there.

Some updated pics, I painted the Handy Coolers to match my armor and bucket.

http://fav.me/d58v58i
http://fav.me/d58v504
http://fav.me/d58v4vl

Great idea! Are those "holster" looking straps parts of you armor or is it a system you rigged just for the ac units? Doesn't look like they are clipped to the sash, more of a belt.

[Darth Munchies]

I have to say this is a great idea. We got one for my wife and she didn't even break a sweat in 80 degree weather standing outside in the sun. These really are worth every penny.

[spree610]

How much noise do these make? Is it noticeable at all?

[Darth Munchies]

They can be noisy, but then guards don't do a whole lot of talking and as long as my wife can see me, she tends to just follow the crowd. We're working on getting some piping done up that will go from the unit to inside the helmet to see if that reduces the noise any.

[JesterTDA]

With my 2-3 fans in my helmet I can never hear anyways so I wouldn't be concerned with additional noise. For that matter...even when I've done cold weather troops and didn't have a single fan running I couldn't hear anything

[Darth Munchies]

Yea, and forget about trying to talk, the bucket is like an echo chamber, your voice just bounces all over inside the helmet and never really makes it anywhere.

[JesterTDA]

Yea, and forget about trying to talk, the bucket is like an echo chamber, your voice just bounces all over inside the helmet and never really makes it anywhere.

Absolute truth

[stripes]

Yea, and forget about trying to talk, the bucket is like an echo chamber, your voice just bounces all over inside the helmet and never really makes it anywhere.

This is why I got a voice amp that I can have the speaker in a pocket on the belt and the mic wired up inside the helmet

[JesterTDA]

I have a voice amp too but realized that even if they could hear me, I couldn't hear them. It's a sort of chicken and egg thing. Most of the time when I'm trooping there is someone near me who can speak and they make cracks about how I'm a big red mime...then I hit them with my forcepike (I actually don't do that).

[Kalashnikov]

Hey Dew. My RG costume is almost complete and I built a helmet cooling system with a mini hand held AC handy cooler unit and plastic hose attached just as you suggested. Great idea!

It works pretty good, but it sure makes a lot of noise. And I'm only using one cooler. How do you deal with trooping while sounding like a walking vacume cleaner?

Thoughts?