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This review of the Fieldsheer Hi-Flow II mesh jacket will be incomplete, because this jacket is primarily intended as a hot weather jacket, and I wore it for this review on a brisk winter day. The first really hot day we get I’ll wear it again and add my impressions of this jacket for hot weather wear.
I bought it back in September, but since I was unable to ride for almost 4 months, today was the first time I wore it. I bought it online from http://www.motorcycle-superstore.com/ for $80 dollars delivered. Delivery took about four or five days. This jacket goes for around this price at a number of online stores, as apparently it is a discontinued item. there are still plenty of them out there, though.
I already own an Olympia Viper jacket in the black/Hi-viz yellow combo, but it is somewhat heavier than this jacket appeared to be from what I could see on various web sites. The colors are also the reverse of this jacket (see photos here). The Olympia Airglide jacket is similar to the Fieldsheer jacket in weight and color. It also goes for around $230. I figured if I got the Fieldsheer, the worst case scenario is I’m out $80 bucks. That’s $80 delivered!
Strangely, I could not find anything other than a computer generated rendition of this jacket on any web site. The Hi-viz color rendering was varied and left some doubt as to what the jacket would really look like. I was pleasantly surprised when it arrived to see that it had a deep, bright coloration that matched my much more expensive Olympia jacket. Like the Airglide jacket, it has a bold horizontal black stripe across the chest. There are also reflective grey panels on the upper arms.
The shoulders and the back of the arms are 500 denier nylon. The the chest and back are made of large mesh panels, as are the inside of the arms. This jacket is clearly designed to flow a lot of air, and it does. This rules it out as a cool weather jacket, unless you wear a wind blocking liner from another jacket, or, as I did, a Columbia wind jacket underneath. With this combination, on a 55* day, I was warm enough, but I was pushing the limit of comfort. This jacket actually comes with a thin nylon rain liner, but it was uncomfortable, so I through it out. Rain isn’t really an issue in SoCal, so there didn’t seem any point to keeping it.
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