Helikon-Tex (and their sister company Direct Action) is a polish company that has been slowly catching on in the U.S., after decades of work in Eastern Europe. Starting as a retailer of military surplus clothing and gear, much like Finland’s Varusteleka, they started producing their own products, and now have a full catalog of everything from hiking pants and rucksacks to med kits, chest rigs, combat shirts and, through Direct Action, even their own BDU system. The Helikon-Tex Windrunner Windshirt serves shooters, hunters and adventurers alike.
Helikon-Tex Windrunner Windshirt
When it comes to hunting, training, hiking, fishing, or even just walking around outside, there’s always an impossible variety of clothing and gear options, many tailored to very specific use or environmental considerations. Having a kit designed for every sort of weather and activity may be the ideal, but it’s not often practical, so when something comes along that manages to perform well in many roles, I tend to sit up and take notice.
I live in a place where the weather spends nine months per year playing cold rainforest, and the rest doing its level-best imitation of a dry grassland climate, so I have a closet full of odds and ends that are necessarily very seasonal in their use. I have also found that Pencott’s Wildwood and Greenzone camouflage patterns perform well among the firs, maples, and bushes around here, with Greenzone working better in winter. Searching for those patterns I found Helikon-Tex in general and the Windrunner Windshirt.
Pros:
The Helikon-Tex Windrunner is a water resistant, breathable, adjustable hood-and-waist top layer jacket. It is designed to trap or dissipate heat, depending on how you’ve adjusted it, and breathes well while repelling light rain and stopping UV light. I have worn it comfortably by itself or over a compression shirt while running errands, grilling in my backyard, playing sports, and hiking through backcountry full of Himalayan blackberry and wild rose thorns. I have taken 90F+ summer pistol classes at Gunsite and at 7,000-feet in Northern Utah and slogged through marshland during 50F downpours. It is far more durable and versatile than it has any business being for as light and thin as it is, and it packs down into its own pocket and becomes a package about as small and unobtrusive as a plastic grocery bag.
The Windrunner Windshirt somehow manages to both insulate enough to keep me warm when it’s cold and wet outside the shirt and allow sweat to evaporate when it’s hot and wet inside the shirt. It doesn’t stop wind, but blunts it, though it stops UV light in its tracks. When I was at Gunsite this past June, and it was in the 90’s with zero cloud cover, the only part of me that got sunburned was the gap between my gloves and the windshirt elastic cuffs.
Performance Features
The drawstrings and elastic allow for a very loose, or very tight fit, which really helps with temperature management. Cinch down the hood and waist when it’s cold, or open them up when it’s hot, and the difference is quite tangible. The small brim on the hood is a nice feature that is better than nothing, but I’m usually wearing a hat, so I can’t honestly say it made a difference for me, but the oversize kangaroo pocket has zippers on both sides, and two small inner pockets for pistol mags, or phones smaller than an iPhone Pro Max.
It comes in a variety of colors and patterns, including some classic (flecktarn, woodland and tiger stripe), and some hipster ones (pencott wildwood and desert night camo, which while old, is suddenly cool again), and is even usually available on Amazon.
Lastly, the Windrunner is more durable than anyone would suspect. Despite the extreme thinness of the material, it has survived heavily stippled pistol grips carried appendix, tons of draw reps, and every sort of thorn and branch I could throw at it. I anticipated a fairly rapid wear rate, but the oldest one I have is about to hit 20 months of regular abuse, and the only damage I’ve noticed is the smaller inner right pocket pulled a seam where I tried to cram a too-large phone into it.
Cons:
Anything that is good at everything, is usually great at nothing, and this is almost true for the Windrunner. It keeps me comfortable in such a wide variety of conditions that it really shouldn’t be able to, given how little material is involved, but it does have a couple of shortcomings.
The primary one I can cite is that the colder the weather gets, the more you’ll want to have something else on hand to wear under it. This thing rocks in the sun, but I was comfortable down to 50F and raining only because I was moving the entire time, often on a significant slope. When I would stop for any reason, I could feel the breezes go from welcome cooling to “oh wait, no” chilly after the first 5-10 minutes.
It is also decidedly NOT waterproof. The DWR coating repels rain for a while but will eventually get waterlogged. I have had some success with water-repellant treatments, but those are always short-lived. The upshot of this though, is that despite being completely soaked. the material somehow still retained my body heat, so long as I kept producing it, like a half-assed wetsuit. I don’t claim to understand how it does this, but I went from worried to shocked, to extending my hike even further over the course of two hours, with an eye on the clock as nightfall would have been brutal.
Lightweight, Thin Package
Considering this jacket is less than half a pound of paper-thin, treated nylon, all of this is honestly still impressive. But the limitations of the Windrunner are real, and can sneak up on you, so if you plan to do any overnight camping in winter or particularly cold spring/fall nights, be prepared to have an insulating, or truly waterproof layer to supplement this with. It is quick-drying, and packs down into a ball of almost-nothing, so this isn’t a major inconvenience.
Lastly, the Windrunner is made in both U.S. and EU sizing, so be sure you know which you’re buying, especially on Amazon. I have two in U.S. large and one in EU large, and the difference is significant (EU large is a U.S. Medium). Fortunately, the U.S. large is intentionally roomy, so I can wear either of them comfortably, but the smaller EU Large doesn’t ventilate as well in hot weather and has less room from which to draw a concealed pistol.
So, is it worth it?
The Windrunner will run between $65-80, depending on where you buy it. Be advised, the shipping from Poland is about as much as the jacket, so look for U.S.-based retailers unless you plan to buy quite a bit more than one half-pound torso-condom.
If you can find the size and color you want and shipping doesn’t double the price, I can comfortably say that $70-ish for such a lightweight, versatile, and slick-looking piece of kit is worth it. If you live in a more stable climate, and versatility isn’t really a consideration, then I’d say this product is much more impressive in an arid, hot environment than the opposite.
Folks living in the warmer parts of the American West will really get the most year-round utility out of the Windrunner, as even when it gets cold, it doesn’t stay so continuously wet, which is really where the cons start to show.
If cost is a serious consideration, think about how often you’d be able to use it and make your call from there. Overall, I have never been so impressed by such a tiny volume of fabric. With the thoughtful construction, appealing styling, surprising durability and spectrum of colors and patterns available, I think most folks could find a regular application for this lightweight powerhouse of an outer layer, even if it’s just to flex the drip at Costco.
For more info, visit helicon-tex.us.
