Area 51 Is At It Again

gloves

Line Of Fire Gloves — TEGS System

If you’ve been a cop for more than 5 minutes, you probably know at least one of those “special” individuals in your area of operation/beat who believes lining the inside of their hat with aluminum foil is the best defense against the CIA, NSA, FBI or the orbiting-behind-the-moon mother ship reading their minds and projecting thoughts into their brains. Take some time and talk to one of them for a minute and bring up the subject of NASA. Almost each and every one of them will tell you NASA has alien ships hidden at Area 51, has been stripping technology from them and is using it in our space program. Perhaps the most famous and most publicly used product with its genesis from NASA is hook and loop — commonly referred to by its brand name Velcro, much like any tissue is commonly referred to as Kleenex.

The Flashover — a Nomex and leather multipurpose glove with extended
cuffs — features TEGS material on the palms and fingers.

Line Of Fire Tactical

LOF is a California company manufacturing and distributing gloves for military and law enforcement use. The gloves are excellent, well constructed and very durable. They have a complete line for LE use, from a number of tactical-use gloves with knuckle protecting material to flight gloves and gloves a patrol cop would be comfortable using. They produce gloves made with Nomex, nylon, ribbed nylon and even Kevlar. Of course, that lineup can be found in just about any tacta-cool glove manufacturer’s catalog. But, there are two additional systems LOF adds putting them in a class of their own — TEGS and Sensa-Touch (yet another “alien” technology).

TEGS — think of it as a high-tech version of hook and loop, only quieter.

TEGS

LOF is proprietarily combining their gloves with TEGS, originally developed by 3M. TEGS is an acronym for Technology Enhanced Grip System. It’s a high-friction micro-dot material with thousands of microscopic projections. It dramatically improves your grip on just about any surface material in practically any environment including blood, sweat, rain, mud, melted snow and even oil.

Have you ever seen a Gecko or spider walk up a wall then across a ceiling? No, the little creature doesn’t have a gravity canceling force field, although the Area 51 folks might argue. It has literally millions of microscopic bristles on its feet, each containing thousands of little hooks measuring 10 millionths of an inch — TEGS works on a similar premise. Like hook and loop, TEGS provides incredible anti-shearing or side-to-side grip, but unlike hook and loop it releases vertically with no effort at all. Simply having LOF’s gloves on while gripping the pistol grip of your long gun or pistol increases grip by 40 percent. When you use TEGS material tape on the grip’s surface (available from LOF), the two surfaces interlock and the grip is increased by 170 percent.

Sensa-Touch

If you have a touch screen anything — phone, tablet, vehicle or aircraft screen — regular gloves won’t cut it. The movement sensors in the screen will not interact. Some manufacturers press strands of metal into glove material for capacitance recognition (what makes the touch screen a touch screen). They can be uncomfortable or cause distortion from plastic dots added to the tips of the gloves’ fingers or reflective silver material sewn into fingertips. A law enforcement shooter doesn’t want and can’t afford any interference at all with the tactile feel on the trigger finger. Line Of Fire’s material supplier uses a unique nanotechnology during the processing of the specialized leathers used in LOF glove construction. You won’t know it’s there, but it works.
By Dave Douglas