Gattonero wrote:pjclinch wrote:Gattonero wrote:
Haver you looked at the picture above?
6 pegs and two poles.
Lots of space.
That's what a good design can achieve. Workout on the fabrica patterns rather than pegs or poles: any large square piece of fabric will sag.
I have looked at it, and wonder if you've looked hard at the Spacepacker?
You could easily eliminate 2, 4 or 6 pegs from the design on the sides parallel with the pole.
Correct, because the SpacePacker is a good design that doesn't need lots of pegs due to a good design done in the first place.
I suspect you have rather misunderstood.
The Spacepacker is a dodecagon so to be pitched properly it really needs all of those pegs. Robert Saunders could have opted for fewer pegging points with a hexagonal or octagonal plan needing consequently fewer pegs, but he didn't. So according to your thesis, it's not a good design, but according to decades of real world use it's very good indeed.
Gattonero wrote:Depending on the design you can have poles or pegs giving room or strength of the whole structure. When you have big square panels and only one pole, then you need to use lots of pegs because there's no support. Think of a flat square tarp over a single pole: you can use it, but it's not perfect as one purposely made with catenary-cuts.
I don't really see this is relevant, to be honest. I can't think of any remotely serious tent which doesn't use panels cut to shape to reflect the shape of the tent (such as those on the Spacepacker giving it 12 sides rather than six or eight). And all else being equal, more pegging will give you more strength. That's the basis of guying, after all. And where you do have big square sections (e.g., between the poles of an untapered tunnel) that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Gattonero wrote:pjclinch wrote:Having (just) survived a night near the CIC hut on the Ben in a sleety blizzard in a Spacepacker that would have trashed a lighter tent like a Statospire that kind of choice of detail is important to me.
You're thinking or you've tried? That tent is made by people that have spent thousands of nights in, and in bad weather conditions too. That is not a company that makes "marketing BS" but a company made by people that when they're not working they're hiking right in the tents they manufacture.
I have a lot of respect for those people that have been doing this job for decades
If you could survive the worst conditions going in a Stratospire there would be no point in having tents like the Soulo. Conversely, if you needed a Soulo to go out in anything other than flat calm there'd be no point in tents like the Stratospire. The Stratospire is aimed at lightweight hikers in typical North American 3 season conditions (in as much as there is any such thing as "average North America"). Conditions like you'll find on Ben Nevis in the winter climbing season (why I was there) are not what the Stratospire (or indeed the Spacepacker! mine was right on its limits) was designed for. That doesn't mean they're BS tents, but just because they're made by a good company doesn't mean they're indestructible, because like every tent design they're compromises between light weight, strength and space. You can't have all of those maximised at once. If you could you'd own the tent market.
Gattonero wrote:Like said already, rely on flex or create a non-movable structure? On a flat design like that "maxy-bivy" thing I wouldn't know what to choose, perhaps I'd try to get it sturdy trying to aviod the sag, and being made of Nylon it WILL sag and will you go out and tighten all those pegs then? Good luck
It's not either/or. You can't make a completely rigid tent. Do that and it's become a caravan or a shed. And motion is not necessarily a bad thing, as the old story about the oak tree and the rushes shows. The rushes are blown flat easily, but get right back up. The oak is very hard to blow down, but once it's happened there's no second chance. Yes, nylon sags and sometimes needs the pegs redoing or the guys tensioning again. So that means that the Hilleberg Keron, with lots of unsupported nylon in those big square panels, is "not a good design"? You might not
like it, but that's not the same thing as being "not a good design" as its track record in hard-core expedition work testifies.
Pete.
Often seen riding a bike around Dundee...