Petrol Deca Eargonizer in bad weather/harsh environment

Question

Howdy!

I just received my brand new Petrol Deca Eargonizer Small audio bag in the post, after reading many recommendations online about this bag. It certainly seems to be very useful and cleverly designed, but I do have one thing that puzzles me a bit.

Basically the flap that covers the top doesn't fully seal the top of the bag. It leaves quite large-ish gaps at the edges and corners. It seems to me that this is not really ideal for when it's raining, or generally for usage in harsher environments. Dirt, dust, moisture/rain, insects - all could easily find its way inside the bag and onto your hard earned expensive gear through those holes/gaps.

So it surprised me that a bag that overall seems so well thought out doesn't offer the flexibility of properly sealing it at the the top. Am I overlooking something here? Note that I haven't used the bag yet, it's literally arrived a few hours ago and have just been inspecting it. What do people with this or similar bags to fully protect their gear against the environment?

• PS I am aware that Petrol also offers an optional rain cover but that thing seems a bit cumbersome and large. Not exactly a very straightforward solution for just closing your bag properly.

Answer 1

When you're wearing it with the supplied strap, the strap tends to pinch the sides of that flap down against the body of the bag.

There really isn't any bag from any company that I've seen that one might consider "weather proof." So I don't really consider this a failing of this particular brand. None of the seal all that well at the top, they're all open on the side for cable management, etc.

You can always do the "garbage bag poncho" trick and modify it to cover the bag if you have particular concerns for certain areas/conditions. I've heard stories of recordists working in deserts who will attach all the cables they may need to their recorder (including power cable to run to external batteries like Anton Bauer or IDX), and then shrink wrapping the hell out of the sucker to keep weather and dust out of any and all crevices. Might be an option for seriously dodgy situations.

Answer 2

Hi, Daan

I've done a quite a bit of rainy and snowy weather work with Petrol bags. Mostly with the older version of the Deca Mixer bag for the SD302.

One of the shows I worked on a while ago had a shooting schedule of 28 days. It rained for 24 of those days.. We didn't have proper rain covers for the mixer bags, but the plastic flap did an ok job and kept most of the rain out the mixer. We used Sound Devices 302 mixers and they can take a bit of rain before they stop working. That helped too.. The wireless receivers were exposed so we shrink wrapped them, like Shaun mentioned in his post.

The next year we were provided provided with Petrol PERC rain covers. It looks pretty cumbersome on the Petrol product page, but I think it works very well. What you don't see on any of the pictures are the Velcro straps that let you tighten the rain cover behind your back. Then it just covers the bag instead of hanging over your knees. You can still reach under the cover and do adjustments without too much hassle. It does get pretty damp inside the rain cover, but I guess some (lots of..) Silica gel bags might help.

Another alternative is wearing a large poncho to cover yourself and the bag, but I personally don't like it. I prefer to wear a poncho to keep myself dry and a separate rain cover for the mixer.

Keep dry -Thomas