ULA Circuit Pack Fit

Have you pulled the stays and fit your back? They look like you have. If so, your fit is fine, as long as you’re happy with how it sits on your hips.

On a light pack with light loads, load-lifter angle is not quite as critical as on a pack with heavy loads (over 40 lbs). Your lifters look to be around 25* which is acceptable, though I’d not want less.

Your load lifters look about right, though it’s hard to tell what they’d look like with a heavy load.  The only oddity, though it’s hard to tell because I can’t see your legs and the camera angle may be distorting things, is the hipbelt looks a bit low on you.  My buckle is almost touching my navel when everything’s adjusted right, but yours *looks* like it might be a couple inches low.

So maybe  the belt really is hanging on your butt, which wouldn’t be right.  The back panel of my Circuit (and Catalyst) protrudes slightly below the belt and snuggles a little on the top of my butt, but the belt itself is a little higher.  I actually like the little protrusion–seems to help stabilize things.

Todd makes I point I meant to make but didn’t (distractions)… you need to get weight in the pack.

I keep a 28lb sack of peat moss on hand (all bundled up in plastic and tape) to put in packs to assess fit and comfort… after all, a pack is designed to carry weight. It’s sort of like trying to assess an aircraft’s performance on the ground without flying it!

Your wearing it too low for starters.
Center of belt should be at top of hipbones, so it resists slipping over them.

Look for shoulder straps to be even or above shoulders on lightwt pack. You dont want it to wrap. Not a conventional pack. If it wraps, straps lose leverage, it falls away from shoulders requiring load lifters to pull it back . Pulling at your shoulders. Halllmark of poor pack design. A proper pack will rest on hips, and ride vertical.

Circuit basically is 3 sizes, it fits or doesnt. As you find out, having belt anywhere but bottom is poor….stay will dig into tailbone.

A proper pack will rest on hips, and ride vertical.
Rather biased opinion imho, and not always true.
There was a time when packs did not have fitted waist belts, and they worked just fine. carried big loads too.
And some people have narrow hips which do not support a waist belt very well.

My 2c
Cheers

I disagree with essentially everything MB said…

As this pack has both a padded belt, and stay, its not a stretch to infer that is what they are there for, to carry load on the hips.

Ive only owned 3 of them though, could be mistaken.

If you dont have belt support wt on hips, you might as well get a frameless pack because it will all end up on shoulders as walk. Your carrying 1.5 lb of pack for nothing. Which is usually what fat people do, wearing belt under gut, because their spare tire prevents pack belt from riding where it should.

Load lifter is a misnomer, its load-keeper-up-righter-not -falling-away- from-backer.

Gotta love the videos where mfgs say ” most people like to wear it here, ” but you can wear it wherever its most comfortable for you”. Of course, as long as you buy it they dont care what you do with it….or if you use it at all.

If you were to say “to help take some load off the shoulders by putting it on the hips’, I don’t think anyone would disagree with you.

And while the stays inside the pack do help transfer some of the load to your hips, their main function is to prevent the collapse of the shape of the pack by curling. This destroys the load carrying capacity. Ryan J himself wrote an article on this way back in 2003, so we have known about the effect for a very long time.
The article is called “Frameless Backpacks: Engineering Analysis of the Load Carrying Performance of Selected Lightweight Packs”.
Find it at https://backpackinglight.com/00194-2/

Cheers

“If you were to say “to help take some load off the shoulders by putting it on the hips’, I don’t think anyone would disagree with you.”

Want to know why ive used my circuit once in last 1500 miles?
Because my custom sized 16.7 oz 2014 arc blast is superior. Keeps all of a 20-25 lb load on hips. None on shoulders. Needs no load lifters, rides vertical , doesnt fall away from back like circuit, ohm does. Its pack-magic apparently. Something few other mfgs of lightwt framed packs have achieved. Hence its popularity. Keeping center of gravity away from back, out of small of back, is likely partly responsible for less tendency to fall away to me.

Circuit isnt a load hauler, its a near ul wt carrying pack, but non UL people use it to haul more than should. I found it ok to 28 or so. It sucked with 6.5 l water, 5 day food, 31-32 lb.