00:00 Alright folks, here we are at the official Alpine Stars Tech Air Off-Road
00:06 press introduction near Death Valley, California. As you can see we had some
00:13 wintertime moisture which made for some really nice trail conditions as you can
00:19 see by the brown, the wetness inside the dirt that is ahead of us. We are
00:24 operating our 2024 Honda Transalp XL 750 while wearing Alpine Stars new Tech Air
00:34 Off-Road. This is an active wearable airbag system that helps protect you in
00:42 the event of a high G impact. Now Alpine Stars has been crafting its Tech Air
00:53 technology. Really the Tech Air story started in the early 2000s when it
01:00 started doing research on the concept with a lot of its road racing athletes.
01:06 Fast forward to 2014 and the Tech Air race was unveiled. That was a production
01:15 airbag, supplemental airbag that you could wear inside your motorcycle
01:21 leathers. Over the years Alpine Stars has introduced a variety of different Tech
01:28 Air applications. Tech Air 3, Tech Air 5, Tech Air 10 which is the modern
01:35 road racing version that now includes hip protection. And now for 2024 it's
01:42 introducing its off-road specific Tech Air Off-Road. This is designed for all of
01:49 us ADV adventure touring and even dirt biking off-road riders who want some
01:56 supplemental protection in the form of an airbag. This helps keep us safe when
02:02 we're riding off-highway. Now this garment basically it's something you
02:10 wear. It's almost like an integrated chest protector, back protector, and
02:15 shoulder and for I'm sorry elbow protector. So it's basically a vest that
02:21 you wear. It weighs right around just over six pounds. Just over six pounds in
02:28 size medium. We are wearing a size large. We stand at six foot tall, 205 pounds and
02:37 the size large fits us really nicely. Whoa got a little hot here. Turn a little
02:44 bit and there we go.
02:47 So that is a rundown of the Tech Air Off-Road. This particular system has a
02:55 variety of settings that you can tweak. So if you're riding in a rally style
03:02 environment you can click the rally setting. If you're riding in an
03:07 off-road style environment, think enduro, you can click the enduro setting. And
03:13 that just allows the the programming of the airbags electronics to more
03:20 accurately control when it reaches a certain threshold where the
03:29 airbag would deploy. So that is the whole point of that. Now this garment is real
03:35 flexible. Basically you can wear it bare skinned so you have no
03:41 undershirt on or you can wear an undershirt or you can wear it over your
03:45 jersey or under your jersey. I have it configured where I'm wearing a base
03:50 layer. So I'm wearing an Alpinestars winter riding base layer which keeps you
03:55 a little bit warmer. It also keeps any any of the pads from rubbing on your
04:00 skin. Not that they do but just it gives you a barrier. So I have the Tech Air
04:06 winter riding top. Then I have the Alpinestars Tech Air off-road. And then
04:12 I'm wearing this Alpinestars Bogota Adventure Touring jacket. This is a
04:18 full-length ADV jacket. I've removed the insulated warm liner and
04:24 the rain liner because obviously it's dry today. The Tech Air off-road, while
04:31 the material has perforation and it's made to flow air and breathe air, just
04:37 because of the large chest protector, that large integrated chest protector
04:42 and the large integrated back protector, you're gonna have some heat retention in
04:47 this vest. So that's why I really removed those liners. You have to remember even
04:53 though it's a nice sunny day the ambient air temperature right now is right
04:57 around 52 degrees. So not the warmest but also not the coldest. And with that
05:03 Alpinestars base layer top and the Tech Air off-road and this Bogota jacket with
05:10 all the ventilation closed with no insulated liner or rain liner, I'm pretty
05:15 comfortable at this temperature. Now the Tech Air off-road, it's really easy to
05:22 charge. It charges from 0% battery in right around four hours. You charge it
05:28 with a conventional household 120 volt power via USB-C cable and it has 30
05:36 hours of runtime. So 30 hours of runtime. Now inside this Tech Air off-road vest
05:43 there is a series of sensors. We have three accelerometers, three gyro
05:51 gyrometers and what that does is that basically gives the vest positional
05:57 awareness on the road. So the vest knows where your body is in relation to the
06:03 road and it's able to to quantify the potential for big impacts coming and
06:09 deploy that airbag vest in as little as 30 millisecond. So that's faster than
06:16 blink of an eye. So the programming of Tech Air off-road allows the electronics
06:24 to predict when the airbag is going to need to deploy and it deploys before you
06:32 have your insane accident to help cushion your vital body organs to help
06:37 you from getting seriously injured. One of the European journalists yesterday
06:44 she was operating her KTM 890 Adventure R. She had a little mistake and she
06:51 actually kind of like low-sided. It was kind of crazy. I saw the end of it and I
06:57 heard it and her airbag deployed and she was totally fine. So sometimes I kind of
07:02 wonder I'm like why would she even want Tech Air off-road? Just ride more
07:07 carefully or ride slower to mitigate chances of an accident or potential
07:12 injury. But when you're riding you just never know what's gonna happen and
07:16 that really that that little mishap that she had really proved the advantage of
07:20 Tech Air off-road. You never know what's gonna happen. She had a little low side
07:25 and airbag deployed and she was totally fine. Bike was pretty okay too. So
07:29 definitely this $1,000 piece of wearable technology has the potential to
07:36 mitigate injury. In fact the the Alpinestars Dakar Racing team, Skyler
07:46 Howes, Toby Price, Ricky Brabeck, they all swear by Alpinestars Tech Air off-road.
07:53 They won't they say they won't ride their dirt bike without it. So pretty
07:57 interesting technology here. So the air bladder gives you chest, neck, back, and
08:06 shoulder protection. The system has two canisters so you can have two there's
08:14 two charges. So let's say you crash twice in one day you will be covered because
08:19 there's two deployments in the airbag system. The internal air bladder allows
08:26 for four deployments in total so you can use the airbag system four times and
08:30 then you have to replace the internal air bladder that's the service life for
08:35 durations of coverage. Now the Alpinestars spent a lot of time making
08:43 the user experience a little bit easier and now riders can actually replace the
08:49 gas cartridges themselves. How crazy is that? You basically pop off the rear
08:54 cover and there's a series of gas cartridges positioned vertically in
09:01 parallel. So you disconnect the connectors and you pull that one out
09:05 you replace the new one. The connectors and the the rear mount only go in one
09:10 way so you really can't screw it up. So now you could just simply if you have a
09:15 deployment you can go home or go to your shop and replace the canisters really
09:20 easily by yourself. The bladder you're still gonna have to send to Alpinestars
09:24 to get replaced every four discharges. So a little bit more durability and a
09:32 little bit more ease of servicing for all of you crashers out there. Alright
09:39 folks here we are this is when the real off-road madness begins. Six-time AMA
09:47 Supercross champion Jeff Stanton he likes to call this bushwhacking. So we're
09:53 about to go bushwhacking through this desert area so we'll see how it is.
10:03 And we're in fresh tracks clean desert tracks. Yes this is sick!
10:10 Riding Honda XL 750 Transalp off these ridges is a blast. What a hoot this thing
10:22 is to ride. Alright folks there's Chad Reed 22 on his KTM blowing up berms.
10:30 Hey you still got it buddy! You still got it!
10:43 Whoa crazy I love those ridge rises they're really scary but also super fun.
10:51 I feel like a kid again. Well folks that wraps up our official review of
10:56 Alpinestars Tech Air off-road vest. We covered a lot of miles on and off road
11:01 and we got to see Tech Air off-road in action. It saved a number of
11:07 participants today especially in the sand dunes. The sand dunes are going a
11:12 lot faster and the loads are a lot higher and everyone walked away with a
11:17 big smile on their face which proves Tech Air off-road did its job. Tech Air
11:25 off-road is really cool it's easy to use it's not too constrictive but you
11:29 definitely feel the size of the back protector to the chest protector and for
11:34 a thousand dollars if you're looking for the ultimate in off-road safety and
11:38 protection for everyone who likes to ride off-road and adventure tour Tech Air
11:43 off-road is a good solution. A thousand dollars yeah it's not the cheapest
11:48 product out there but you can't put a price on safety and being able to go
11:52 home and go to work on a Monday morning. As always folks make sure to
11:57 head on over to MotorcyclistOnline.com that's where all of our written
12:00 content comes to life. Give this video a thumbs up if you liked it thumbs it down
12:04 if you didn't because we'd love to hear from the naysayers. Everyone's
12:09 opinion counts here we are an inclusive organization and we'll see you in the
12:12 next episode folks thanks for riding with us
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