My newish sleeping bag (DWR down) has a Hydronaute XT* shell.
My newish quilt is a MLD Spirit, with a MLD Endurance 10d 3x DWR** shell.
I recently found that with two people in the smallish 2 person tent at somewhere around freezing inside the tent, that if I used the sleeping bag without the quilt in the morning the shell would look and feel soaked.
If I used the quilt over the bag, in the morning I found the bag shell dry, and the quilt shell would look and feel dry *except* for quite a lot of droplets of water that formed on the surface that were easily shaken off.
I do not know what was going on the inner side of the shell, after a few days the quilt started to develop ice within the insulation. Evidently the dew point seems to be somewhere between myself and the outershell of my outermost layer at the time. (The tent stayed relatively free of condensation, with the exception of some parts of the bathtub floor and the outer's roof).
I just tried a rather simple test of pouring a bit of tap water on the quilt shell and the bag shell, the DWR looked to act about the same on both fabric, beaded off leaving no wet patch. (Wasn't practical to test the shell DWR from the inside.)
What do you guys make of that fabric being soaked vs beading from condensation?
(Is H-XT a poor choice for a sleeping bag shell? Does Pertex Endurance behavior similar?)
I notice H-XT is illustrated* to have some sort of 'membrane', though no mention of waterproofing (I've read on BPL of the badness of WPB bag shells…). As far as I know Mont is a smallish company, I imagine H-XT is just a rebranding/licencing of something a bigger player is making, any ideas as to what?
* http://www.mont.com.au/hydronaute-xt-info
** http://www.mountainlaureldesigns.com/fabric.php
