A Tale of Two Bespoke Cicadas

Front panels — where the same 2 liters go

Drawn from ULA's published pocket list and the owner's packs, not maker drawings. Both panels carry the same 122 cu in, which is why the shaded block occupies the same width on both depth bars. The 0426 stacks it in three layers behind three zips; the 0826 puts it in one layer behind two zips, plus a separate pocket on the lid. Where the sources disagree the pack wins: ULA's copy puts a three-section mesh organizer inside the 0826's top QAP and two organizer pockets in its front compartment, but the QAP is undivided and the three-section organizer is the one in the front, on the face you meet from the right zip.

A connected compartment does not add liters to the pack. It changes what the front volume can hold: on the 0826 one wide item can span the whole panel instead of being forced into a half, and either hand reaches the same contents. The trade is that nothing stays sorted by geometry. The mesh does that work, and only on the right-hand face, where the 0426 has fixed pockets doing it before anything is packed.

The 0426 stacks where the 0826 spreads. Its three pockets sit in layers rather than across the panel: the 1 L compartment is outermost, the two 0.5 L sections sit behind it, and the main body is behind those. Reaching into the 1 L compartment and reaching into a 0.5 L section put your hand at different depths in the same 5 inches of pack. That is owner-recorded. ULA publishes the volumes but no arrangement, and its dimension line for this panel (14.5″ × 7.5″ for the large pocket, 6.5″ × 7.5″ for each small one) is reprinted verbatim on the 0826, whose front is a single 2 L layer, so it describes neither pack. The photographs cannot settle it either: the 0426 is navy on navy with black zippers.