Six Moon Designs Trekkers Arrive
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My Six Moon Designs Skyscape Trekker arrived today. After 10 minutes in the back yard, it looks good. Setup was easy. I can stretch out — I'm 6-3 — nicely. I can sit up pretty nicely. That's all without a pad, so I'll lose a little bit of room during actual use, but I don't foresee a problem.
It's hot and humid in Southeastern Virginia today, so all that ventilation is very, very welcome. I'm a tarp guy, and I expect to set it up the Trekker like this 90 percent of the time. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm pretty sure that, in the case of late-night rain, I can reach around and loosen, then zip up and stake, the rolled-up walls from inside the tent.
Given the Skyscape Trekker's roomy interior and ample ventilation, I'm not sure I'll use the porch much, but here it is.
Yes, I know there are crested black macaques in Indonesia who take better self portraits than I do. (Try a Google search if you don't know what I mean.)
Another thought about packing the porch: It could do triple duty as a ground cloth and a cape/shoulder wrap sort of thing. I might actually try that.The Skyscape has room for all your stuff, depending on your pack — mine is frameless. Important note: This is the fat-boy/large NeoAir, 77 inches long by 25 inches wide, and the shoes are size 12 1/2. This is plenty of space for my stuff, and normal people will have even more room.
Head end.
"Back" side (opposite door).Chris:
I apologize for the goofy-looking model. He is 6-feet, 3-inches tall, with big hair, sitting up straight on top of a NeoAir.
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By the by, a storm dumped three inches of rain in about one hour last night. My back yard flooded, and there is now a fair amount of water inside the Skyscape (WHICH I HAVE NOT YET SEAMSEALED). I don't know if the water came through the seams or just flowed in over the top of the floor. Maybe it was a combination. If it was the former, no problem. Sealing the seams should solve everything. If it was the latter, I'm still not worried. First, I'm unlikely to pitch my tent in a place as swampy and slow-draining as my back yard. The tent was in standing water last night. Seven hours later, there is still standing water in a semi-circle eight to 10 feet away from the tent. Second, it would be simple enough to prop up the sides of the "bathtub" floor with sticks and stones while pitching the tent (or — my favored technique, when possible — raise the floor itself on a slight mound of leaves or pine needles).One more thing: The pitch remained taut through the storm. I'm surprised the stakes didn't come loose. I really like how you can tighten things up by adjusting the poles from inside the tent. That's just like with a tarp, but the poles are within even easier reach.
Well, after a long week of work I finally got to set up my new Trekker tent. First
off I think it will be a great tent, as shipped it weighed in at 24.2 oz, with the
"porch" attachment coming in at 2.3 oz.. All in all about as light as you can get
in a tent for the money. I found the tent set up very easily in about 5 minutes.
I had mine set up for about 2 hours and did not have to re-tension the guy outs,
the tent fabric stayed taut the whole time. It's a very roomy tent with enough
room for two if you are VERY good friends. I did see a few drawbacks with the
design though.First was the spreader bar that came with the tent, with the tent
guyed out and the tent taut, the peak of the tent was very wobbley. A friend of
mine owns a Lightheart Solo, and we used the spreader bar from that to try, and it
worked wonders. Took a tent with so so stability and turned it into a rock, no
wobble at all.Second was the back vestibule, it would have been nice to have
access to it from inside the tent, even a small window of some sort would work,
but I'm not about to try and modify it.The third thing was the "porch" attachment,
I dont know if mine was oversized or what, but I could never get the thing tight
enough to make it usable for anything but shade in a no wind situation.
When we had it set up in a very light breeze (less than 5mph) it flopped around like a fish
out of water. I have a few ideas to remedy the problem, I just dont know what effect
sticky back velcro would have on the silnylon. I fixed the spreader bar issue by
making one similar to the Lightheart one out of 1/2 inch pex tubing. I got the pex
in a 5 foot length at Home Depot for 2 bucks. Just used the original as a guide
for length, heated the tubing and made a couple of 45 degree bends on the end and
cut to length. I did also get the bungie corded pole for it also, but will
probably not be using them because I think they would punch through the bottom of
the tent without some sort of pocket sewn in. But all in all a great tent.
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