Club Obi Wan

Well I certainly hate shorts. I would wear pants rather than shorts just about anywhere. Action heroes and shorts just don't go together anyway. Bruce Willis tried it with Striking Distance and it looked lame.

I have to agree with HF on this one. The desert is one thing -- it can get cold at night and so a jacket isn't a bad idea at all. But as for jungles, unless you're at mid to high elevation, a heavy leather jacket makes about as much sense as shorts in the Arctic.

Argonaut wrote:Well I certainly hate shorts. I would wear pants rather than shorts just about anywhere. Action heroes and shorts just don't go together anyway. Bruce Willis tried it with Striking Distance and it looked lame.

Yes, shorts in the jungle are a terrible idea unless you want to quickly look like a corpse from losing all that blood to mosquitos.

Bear in mind, too, that we always assume that Indy is in hot, humid jungles because....well, that's where we see some of these adventures take place.

The same trip that took him to Cairo had him in the snow in Nepal....

Tony

Having worn the gear in Portugal for a few hours was one thing, but having to wear it all the time... sheesh!

"Jock, start the engines!"

If you can find the July 15, 1946 Life Magazine, there is an article about Lewis Cotlow, Explorer. He is standing beside a bunch of South American natives holding their shrunken heads.It is a B&W photo, but old Lewis is wearing a light (tan?) safari shirt, darker pleated pants and a fedora. This guy was a real Indy and he looked like a clone of Dr. Jones. In 1946 one of the real guys thought the gear was very practical.

If Indy wasn't wearing a leather jacket he probably would not have been able to crawl under the cargo truck and drag from behind it. Like a leather biker jacket, it would help protect his flesh from being scraped off. For that reason alone it is essential Indy gear although I can understand why he wasn't wearing it for most of Temple of Doom. Indy's jacket is his armor.

Well, concerning the initial title of this thread, I have to agree, partly - Ford is right ... to a certain point.
I've been working several times now in different climate and a felt hat can be indeed more of a pain than a help in really dry and hot places. While digging in the desert, I prefer other solutions to protect my head against the sun, but now and then even the Fedora comes in handy.

The jacket ... well, that depends on what you are going to do. I'd avoid wearing it during a "normal" day's work in the field, if temperatures pass a certain point. But it is great protection against sandstorms and I woudl never forget it, if exploring some more shadowy places.

So, all in all - the gear makes sense - in the right context.

Hey Jens: I can sure appreciate the jacket being perhaps a bit warm where you tend to get yourself

But...about 3 years ago a Public Health inspector from up North, made the point of showing me a picture of the standard uniform of a Northwestern Ontario Canadian Public Health Inspector from the 30-40's. It was almost Identical from the hat right down to the jacket

Living up North, the whole outfit makes perfect sense.
The hat keeps you from burning your ears and the leather protects you from
the bush and the mosquito's

Other than things getting hot in the summer, the outfit makes perfect sense to us in the Great white North eh

Cheers
Kilgour Trout

IndyWannaBee wrote: Same reason why does Captain Jack Sparrow wear what he does being in the Caribbean! Sometimes you wonder what costume / prop people are thinking during character development!

To be fair, Sparrow's jacket , vest, shirt and pants are made out of either linen or a linen blend, keeping him much cooler then if it was made out of wool.
Not to mention a good part of the time, he's without the coat and hat.

Kilgour Trout wrote:Hey Jens: I can sure appreciate the jacket being perhaps a bit warm where you tend to get yourself

But...about 3 years ago a Public Health inspector from up North, made the point of showing me a picture of the standard uniform of a Northwestern Ontario Canadian Public Health Inspector from the 30-40's. It was almost Identical from the hat right down to the jacket

Living up North, the whole outfit makes perfect sense.
The hat keeps you from burning your ears and the leather protects you from
the bush and the mosquito's

Other than things getting hot in the summer, the outfit makes perfect sense to us in the Great white North eh

Cheers
Kilgour Trout

Good point. Very good point! And indeed, when travelling north, I'd never change a bit of the gear so far (well, adding a scarf maybe ).

Hi guys - I know this is now an old thread, but thought I'd put in my two-penneth-worth. I just got back from a month's fieldwork in Libya in April, and wore the gear every day to give it a 'field test', because I was curious as to whether it would REALLY be any good in North Africa...

I have to say, the wool cavalry twill trousers were ideal - never too hot, comfortably loose, tough and dried surprisingly quickly. Plus they take on a great colour when constantly exposed to North African dust and dirt.

I wore a Wested and a WPG shirt, and I can't speak highly enough of the practicality of the Wested cloth - light, soft, breathable and dried extremely quickly. The shirt night not be SA, but talking about practicality as real field gear, it's darned good. No artificial fibres here thank you very much. Very much looking forward to trying out the Todd's when it arrives - looks awesome.

As for wearing the hat, I have to second the view that it's a matter of your body getting used to it, but then it's very practical. Yes, straw is great, but check out all those Australian pioneers (who made Akubra what it is today) and those folk in the wild west - felt was the fabric of choice.

As for the jacket (lambskin), I often wore it in the sun and it is surprising how it reflects some of the sun's heat. Even in 90-100F it was usually very comfortable, and I was hiking up and down hills, surveying. But not always ideal. And we have to remember that in Raiders, Dr. Jones by choice didn't wear his jacket outside in the day in Egypt at all - he was only wearing it in the flying-wing - truck chase sequence because he'd been wearing it to work at night on the Well of Souls. Good job he had it on as it turns out...

Of course, Mr. Ford was forced to wear these things for days on end shooting the same scenes over again in whatever conditions, so had less choice in the matter than Indy himself, as scripted, did. Not surprised some of the items' appeals wore a bit thin for him!

Pip pip.

what doesnt make sense about his gear is that he wears the same outfit in the hot south american jungle as he does in the freezing weather of Napal....with the addition of a pair of gloves!

Yes, that's the rub, isn't it! I haven't tried it in the jungles yet, but I hear from my Borneo-excavating friends that leather boots can be a bit of a mixed blessing. i.e. they keep the leeches out just until they rot off your feet. Reckon the jacket and hat could be good against nasties, though.

I wore my old Akubra in Singapore forest, which is 95% humidity, and that did a grand job.

Still, we know what a cautious packer Dr Jones is.... Personally, I think he was wearing a long-sleeved v-neck t-shirt under his shirt and long-johns under his trousers in Nepal.... )