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Pat Kane raises an excellent point, without necessarily articulating it. But I like things spelled out, so here goes:
The Pelican lacks a very important feature for field sports.
Big wheels.
Rolling over grass, gravel, and whatever that grit is called that covers all the bases, the pitcher's mound, and home plate, is literally hell on wheels. Especially those itty bitty Pelican wheels.
I've burned through three different versions of that 1650 over the years. In the earliest version with the flip up handle, the wheels didn't have ball bearing cartridges, so the plastic axle bores would wear eccentrically, and wear out. Also, the wheels were positioned too close together, causing the case tip wrench your wrist from side tipping while rolling.
Later, when the handle moved to an externally added back panel, and impact deflection ribs were molded into the side of the case, the wheels were moved more towards the outboard ends, but not entirely. And despite the wheels being dually's on both sides, they were still too small to not get stuck in gravel. Even a piece of pea gravel can stop the case in its tracks.
The darn case weighs 29 lbs empty without the divider set. Put the divider set, the lid organizer, and those heavy copper leads for your lighting, not to mention the heads/packs themselves and all the accessories, and you're talking 75-80 lbs of density rolling on a 2" diameter wheel with a 1" radius. It won't roll well on gravel. And that baseball field grit will get between the dually wheels and grind them up too.
The latest version of 1650, as shown in both pics above, with the shorter side handle, the cheesier back pull out handle borrowed from a smaller form factor case, and with all the impact deflection ribs thrifted out of the mold, still doesn't have big wheels. And that's what is needed on a grass and dirt ball field.
That's where something with wheels like the FatMax that pat_kane pointed out finds merit.
Robert Hanishiro of Sportsshooter published a nice article in his newsletter about 10 years ago on this issue. It isn't new for sports photographers. The article was related to covering the 2004 summer Olympics. One of the parking lots the media was assigned to park in was all gravel. That sucks in a Pelican. I know from first hand experience. I've got a half dozen of them.
I'd suggest a dolly with big wheels to roll your new Pelican out to the ball field on.
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