Contrail Questions

There are people on here with far more contrail experience/expertise than me but to quickly answer a few of your questions with my experience:

When wet I have wiped down the tent with a towel, then draped it over a canopy bed's posters to dry overnight – it worked great.

I always stuff it in the bag it came with, with struts attached. Takes a little bit of finessing. I generally start with putting one strut inside in the beginning and adding handfuls of tent, squeezing in the other strut either mid-way through or towards the end of cramming in all the tent fabric. I've never removed the struts.

I sleep with my pack under my feet usually. But I'm short and so having enough space is not really an issue for me. I've also used my smaller pack placed sideways as a pillow – rearranging the strap a little combined with some fleece layers folded up over it was really comfy.

Thanks Angela! I didn't think about just stuff the struts first. I'd like to save the weight on my pad, but I may try sleeping with my pack under my feet first. I'd hate to cut it and then find out I can't stand it. I have a 6 boat kayak rack in my garage, so I could possible just drape it over that. I may just try to come up with a way to put it up in my garage though. Maybe I could use weights or something to "stake" it out.

Roman,

Try folding the struts inward on themselves (so they lay flat against each other, parallel to the floor) and then folding the Contrail body fabric lengthwise. Fold at least part of the body lengthwise again until the body fabric is about the same width as the struts. Then start rolling from either end–better, I think, to start from the struts end–and roll tightly as you go. Everything will roll up into a package and should slide–twist as you go–into the stuffsack without too much difficulty. That's how we do it here prior to shipping.

-H

Roman:

This one is subjective, but I prefer that my pack and shoes stay under the vestibule. However, when I was using my blue foam sleeping pad, I still sliced it into two sections — 60" and 12". During the day, the smaller piece serves as sitting pad and wind screen (if need be). At night, the two are velcroed together to "re-form" a full-length pad.

Now that I am too old for blue-foam pads, I still opt for two sections: a short length self-inflating pad for the upper body plus a blue-foam foot section.

Roman,
I don't have a garage, or a wife, and have rigged a low-stretch dyneema cord in my living room. It zigzags across the room three times and allows enough room to dry tents and rain gear, plus air out my down bag. You might rig something like that in your garage.

Thanks for the advice Henry. I like how you emphasized no wife as a necessary component for your method Denis! lol

I got it in my dry bag. I just put the struts in and then stuffed the rest of the tent beside them. I was only able to fold down the top twice though, since the struts are the full length of the bag. At least, I can use it for this weekend though!
(I use a dry bag, so I can pack it wet and not get anything else in my pack wet.)

I can't seem to find anything doing google searches tonight. I noticed the Contrail will fit in the outside zipper pocket of the Jam2. Anyone else carrying their tent this way?