One thing that bothers me is the fact that I use walking poles (with the rubber covers on,relax) and I cannot find a tent that fits my “wants” and makes use of them.
Now I am a bit of a tent fanatic, so lack of knowledge is not the problem, I am just too fussy and already have three tents.
Only about three weeks ago suddenly I had a vision, a rectangular footprint with the two poles stretching the narrow ends. Four seconds later it came to mind that I still needed two crossover poles to keep it up, that left me with a stronger frame but with the same weight as my Lighthouse.
Now I see that Mr. Shire in the meantime has managed to combine a Macpack Microlite with the cross pole of the Lighthouse to solve the narrow wall problem of the single middle hoop and still have a vestibule for half of the weight of the above mentioned tents.
Well I am salivating.
If the Rainbow (love the name since it reflects the shape) has a guy out point at the opposite side of the vestibule (the weak point of this design is wind resistance) and tie-outs at the four corners, we could have a 3.5 season tent or with double poling a 4 season one.
BTW since Henry is experimenting with Epic, I have had the BD out in continuous rainfall for over 10 hours without leaks, I think that the main problem with wetting out is to do with the pressure points.Would a strip of silnylon between the poles and the Epic fabric solve the problem?
I predict that the “Rainbow” will become the bestselling Tarptent.
