Cycling UK Forum

My new touring tent has sectional aluminium poles with a bungee through them, the snap together easily. You slide these tubes through a sleeve sewn into the tent to form hoops. However there is a short length (150mm) of aluminium tubing in the pole sack and I cannot work out what it is for?

My pal who has a 20 year old touring tent also has such a tube and he doesnt know either?

DAK?

Al

I have one with a keyhole and another hole cut in it which i assume is for getting pegs in and out of the ground. Terra Nova anodised blue
Other tubes are repair sleeves which you can join broken poles with (in theory). They will of course be just big enough for your poles to slide into.

Back in the old days you would have spacers like that which kept inner and outer tents apart on the upright poles

The piece of tubing is probably a spare piece for repairing broken poles.

Wesh-Laurence wrote:The piece of tubing is probably a spare piece for repairing broken poles.

Yep! The little bit of tube that came with my tent had a label with a diagram to explain its purpose.

Its not for repair because its a bigger diameter than the poles and quite rigid

I wondered if it is for inserting into the sleeve to guide in the thinner pole?

Al

More likely, the short section of tube is for repairing a broken pole. I have a 130mm section of tube and is bigger in diameter than the pole it'self. If the pole broke under stress, then the short tube would act as a binding in case of emergency, also you would need to wrap some tape of some form around the tube to secure it.

I can confirm that a lot of tents I have used have had such pieces supplied and that they are intended to help deal with a broken pole. They are a larger diameter than the pole-sections themselves a) because poles often distort one way or another before they break, and b) because poles often break in the places where they curve - that's where they get stressed most.
If the 'emergency section' had a similar ID as the OD of the pole-section, then they would only fit if the broken pole-section remained straight & undeformed... & as rapidfire72 points out, the tent makers also assume, quite reasonably, that a broken pole-section will receive first-aid on the form of various wrappings, such as tape or chord, thus requiring the ID of the emergency-section to be more than perhaps you'd expect.

I thought aluminium poles were not prone to breaking as fibreglass ones are said to be.If this is the case then a mending piece is unlikely to be supplied.I have never had a pole break (yet) but I do carry a spare bit of tube just in case.My tents have always been pretty cheap so spares would not be supplied anyway.There was a lot to be said for my old Blacks Good Companions with A pole.Trouble is it weighs a ton.

Once aluminium has bent, any attempt to bend it back will probably result in it snapping. Metal fatigue happens pretty easily with alu.

It's why aluminium bike frames are built so rigid.

rapidfire72 wrote: also you would need to wrap some tape of some form around the tube to secure it.

Another good reason to put some ducting tape around your pump for emergency use......

If you have a very long prong on the pole end, then the tube fits over it before the flysheet is fitted. It spaces the flysheet from touching the inner or ridge pole.