The CAFFIN tents come!

[Roger Caffin]

> if it could handle really bad weather
Well, it has not been tested much over 100 kph wind, but that was all night. We slept.

Yep, read When Things Go Wrong.

Could it take 150 kph wind? End on to the wind with the right pitching technique, I would expect so. You would need to use the sod cloth seriously imho.

My summer tunnel tent took gusting winds side-on and over 100 kph for a short while in Slovenia one year – but we were inside the tent bracing the poles! The wind went aay after maybe 1/4 hour. All was well.

THE secret: very good guying! Make sure no stake ever moves. The CF poles and the silnylon seem quite strong enough.

Cheers

[J C]

Wow totally missed this thread! Only stumbled upon it after someone mentioned people "requesting" wider Caffin tents in another thread. Very interesting. Please keep us updated Roger.

[Simone Zmood]

Hi Roger,

When (being an optimist!) your winter tent goes into production are they also considering making your titanium snow pegs and deadman anchors?

Cheers,
Simone

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Simone

> are they also considering making your titanium snow pegs and deadman anchors?
Not yet, anyhow. Remember: Easton are an aluminium (& CF) company. I doubt they have any experience with Ti.
Could they use their 7075 T9 alloy instead? Hum … I wonder. I will keep that idea in the back of my head.

Cheers

[Tad Englund]

Roger, wouldn't the T9 have a little too much "stick" with the snow (unless painted). Regular aluminum seems to have more "stick" then Ti. I haven't used T9 knowingly.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Tad

> wouldn't the T9 have a little too much "stick" with the snow (unless painted).
> Regular aluminum seems to have more "stick" then Ti.
Now that is a good question. A VERY good Q.

You are right that ordinary aluminium bonds far too well to snow AND ICE. Extracting ordinary stakes can be very hard in the morning, especially in Oz where the snow can be wet in the evening, and ice in the morning. Getting them out has sometimes needed an ice axe, and sometimes been damaging. And that is precisely why I developed those Ti stakes and deadman anchors featured in
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/make_your_own_gear_titanium_snow_stakes.html
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/myog_ti_snow_stakes_part_2.html

But I am not sure how the heavily anodised tubing Easton uses behaves in snow and ice. How well does snow and ice bond to that surface? I don't think I have done much testing there. Obviously those round tent-pole stakes are not good enough for snow, so few ever use them in the snow.

However, my memory is that getting Easton tent poles out of frozen sleeves in the morning was not that difficult (just unbearably cold without gloves). I don't remember ever having the poles really freeze to the fabric, even when the fabric was frozen solid (pre-silnylon days).

Hum … could Easton anodise sheet metal the same way as the tubing? Dunno. Limited market might be the problem of course.

Cheers

[Andre Buhot]

Roger, Easton would have no problems with the Anodising look at the Hoyt target bows for a range of colours that they produce in house. Easton and Hoyt are divisions of the same company.

[Ben Pearre]

@Tjaard:

You share my concern with the lengths of tents, although I am shorter than you (at a mere 188 cm). 220 cm, which seems to be the most often mentioned floor length for Roger's tent, is conveniently also the floor length of most of the Hilleberg line. So if you can find one of those on display, it may be useful to you.

For me, the Kaitum (vertical ends, both protected by vestibules, like Roger's design) is significantly longer than I need even after snowfall, whereas their Nallo/Nammatj/Anjan (also 220 cm floor length, with one vertical end and one sloping end) are too short even without snow when I'm sleeping on my back (side sleepers may be shorter), even without a 7-cm air pad. Perhaps you can find a store that sells Hilleberg and see whether you can use the Kaitum as a mock-up of Roger's tent.

Note, however, that the Kaitum 2 has a floor width of 140 cm, although it slopes only inward from there, not outward like Roger's. So I'm not sure how different Roger's design will feel; I suspect that it'll be just fine, even if the nominal width ends up being a little narrower…

@Roger:

I'm very excited to see that your tent will finally be available to us less-skilled folk! Congratulations! If a large group pre-order would help keep Easton's enthusiasm up, please count me in, even sight unseen.

By the way–does it have a PU floor, or silnylon, or…? Silnylon is frustrating unless the campsite is perfectly flat–does it offer enough strength/weight/abrasion advantage to make the annoyance worth it? It seems to me that tent fabrics that absorb as little water as possible are important to keeping the effective weight down; I know silnylon absorbs a fair amount but I don't know how PU fares in this regard. I hear Cuben is pretty good… ;)

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Ben

> does it have a PU floor, or silnylon,
Don't know yet. Most likely silnylon as the PU coating typically halves the strength of the fabric.
We are still working to find a suitable factory. The Chinese are good at the pop-ups which they know; they do not seem to be good at upgrading quality. Yet.

Cheers

[Ben Pearre]

Hi Roger et al,

What colour is the tent to be?

How can tent colour matter? Here's what I can think of, but I am pretty sure the list is incomplete, and I'd love to hear what others think. (Apologies if I've missed this conversation elsewhere. I've seen a couple of these points raised in the fora here, but never all in one place.)

* Outside colour:

– Low visibility:

+ low-impact camping principles suggest that tents should be inconspicuous so the landscape is not polluted by unnatural colours, especially during peak season in high-use areas.

+ possibly valuable for safety through stealth when you're not in trouble, in certain parts of the world.

– High visibility:

+ may keep others from accidentally camping too close to you in high-use areas.

+ easier discovery by SAR when you're in trouble.

+ safety if you pitch the tent where there's fast traffic (snowmobilers or downhill skiers?).

– Darker colours heat up faster in the sun: better chimney effect? (who uses tents in the sun, anyway?) and dry faster.

+ How does colour affect radiative cooling at night?

* Inside colour:

– Bright/cheery (yellow, cream, etc) to keep spirits up if one is tentbound waiting out a storm (maybe not much of an issue for summer tents? But I've seen one or two summer storms where that might be a nice option. Never camped in them, though).

– Light colours make it easier to hunt down infiltrating mosquitos.

– Dark colours dry faster if exposed to the sun (probably not an issue except for separate canopy+fly pitching?).

Double-wall tents usually present different colours to outside vs. inside, but that's difficult (although perhaps not technically impossible, but presumably at high weight and/or monetary cost) for a single-wall.

So what are good colour choices for a single-wall tent? My hunch is that a light gray granite type of colour might be a fair compromise between liveability and inconspicuousness… Your summer tent is bright blue, which I would think wouldn't really speak well to any of the criteria I've listed (blue doesn't even scream "Rescue me!"). What am I not thinking of? I suspect you have some rather well-thought-out reasons. More importantly, I'd love to start a bar brawl over tent colour ;)

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Ben

Ah, colour. That has not been addressed as yet.

Yes, we have looked at the pros and cons of various colours. Both low visibility and high visibility colours have their proponents.

One advantage of the blue colour is that it makes all the insects cluster right at the peak of the roof – I think they are seeking blue/UV for some reason.
It won't be a dark colour as that can be very depressing inside.

My summer tent is blue because … my wife likes blue.

My winter tent is flame orange/red on the outside for safety reasons – even just seeing the tent in bad weather. The inside tent is bright yellow, for cheery reasons in mid-winter. You can see the inner tent on the left.

Cheers

Cheers

[Paul McLaughlin]

My 2 cents on the colour: Very much agree that the winter tent should be orange/red/yellow for visibility. I've been in storms where even my orange tent was barely visible from 30 feet away – a less visible color could make a potty break into a nightmare. Plus I've found a nice orange-y yellow to be very cheerful in storms.

One consideration for summer tents is heat. Sometimes you need to escape the ravenous skeeters on a sunny day, and a color that stays cooler would be much appreciated.

[icefest From Australia]

How is the timeline going for the summer and winter editions? Still looking at spring 2014 for the summer version?

[Roger Caffin]

> How is the timeline going for the summer and winter editions? Still looking at spring
> 2014 for the summer version?
Dunno.
Sorry, but we are having trouble getting some Asian factories to make anything other than a pop-up. The staff cannot read English, and simply cannot understand 9or so it seems).
Still trying, but 4 prototypes later we still do not have something any of us would accept.

Cheers

[Bob Gross]

"The staff cannot read English"

They can't read English, or they can't understand what they read?

Simple, Roger. You simply instruct them in Mandarin Chinese. That, with some hand-waving, and you ought to get it done.

–B.G.–

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Bob

I have been told that they cannot READ English. The instructions did include photos and sketches.

I am good at the hand waving, but they are in Taiwan.

On my own initiative I tried getting a different (Asian) factory to sew a sample of the critical pole seam – and they got it 95% right the first time from the same instructions. But it seems that factory may be more expensive.

Cheers

[Ben Pearre]

It seems to me that at your level of perfectionism, and given the difficulties you're having, you may need someone on-site who has a functional understanding of your tents.

That would require the company to invest in a slightly bilingual employee (Is Australian easy for a second-language English speaker to learn? ;) ), and in a relatively small amount of employee training. I know that nuances of quite a few corporate cultures will make this impossible, but is it an option anywhere at sub-ridiculous cost?

The secret bonus: then you might be able to talk Easton into flying you to China to take an employee or two camping. It would be a relatively low investment for a whole lot of apparently vital education, probably would qualify as a simple and cheap business trip, and the reward for you might be a spectacular walk in interesting company. I hear Xizang is nice ;)

You've probably thought of all this and ruled it out for rather good reasons. I'd be curious to learn about them, but meanwhile please forgive my backseat driving…

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Ben

The thought had crossed my mind.

However, the most obvious problem to my mind has been the lack of communication ability with the – well, 'floor supervisor' maybe? Management of the factory might speak English, but not the people who actually do the work. Difficult.

Cheers

[Bob Gross]

Roger, I will bet that they understand the language of dollars. Make 'em a deal that they can't refuse.

–B.G.–

[Roger Caffin]

> I will bet that they understand the language of dollars. Make 'em a deal that they can't refuse.
Oh, management understood the dollars. The factory was another matter.

Cheers

[Daryl and Daryl]

Roger,

I have empathy for your frustration in getting your tent made the way you want it. I designed a couple of tents in the early 70s and had the same problem. They were easy to sell but I couldn't get anyone to make them (or even sew them) in an acceptable way. I made and sold a few myself then went back to just making things for myself.

This is one area where the cottage shops have an advantage. If they make one they can make others and they don't have to train anyone else to do it.

The language barrier problem, of course, makes things even more difficult. I had my house painted a few years ago. The foreman spoke English but wasn't always around. All the other guys spoke only Spanish. Very frustrating. Simple things like reading and following instructions for some of the specialized paint products became very difficult.

[Jacques de Plume]

Any news on the development of the Caffin tent? :-)

[Roger Caffin]

The news is not good. It seems that Easton management may have lost interest in high-performance tents. I had been told that the Sales guys were only interested in selling cheap tents for lots of money to the likes of Walmart. That market is not where my tents would fit.

So at the moment – they don't come.

Sigh

[Stephen M]

That's a shame Roger.

[James Marco]

Too bad, this reminds me of the old quote "Quantity has a quality of it's own." I believe this was atributed to Joseph Stalin.

[Author]

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