duomid guy line length?

The the mid-panel hem guy lines can be about the same length as the corners.

For the mid-panel (higher up) guy lines, I’d estimate that 8 feet is plenty — easy to shorten, if necessary — but be sure to follow the directions and use some shock cord to reduce stress on those tie-out points.

I’ve never used the side mid-panel tie-outs because I use the inverted V pitch with trekking poles, which prevents those panels from blowing inward.

My mid-hem guyouts have more line than Bob suggests so that I can eyebrow the corners out. I think I have 30” on them but I plan to cut that down at some point.

Previous discussion

My guy lines (on Duomid) are probably too long, like 2-3 feet. I almost always set up the tent close to the ground, so almost no length gets used. The only time you may potentially long guy lines is when setting up on bedrock (like Utah) and use rocks instead of stakes. Then you may chose to wrap a rock in a loop of line. Even in that case, I think it’s much better to use a stake and then put rocks on top of it.

Still, guy lines are not that heavy. Would be shame if you’d find them too short in some situation. So, I keep mine as long as they are.

One more thing. I think Andrew Skurka recommended this way of making essentially a z-pulley out of a guy line to easily tension them (look it up, you’ll find). This requires the guy line to go back and forth. This does require a longer line.

Good point, Anton, about guyline length when using rocks.

If I know I am going somewhere that I’ll be tying off to rocks, however, I carry some extra lengths of 3mm cord to tie around the rocks or use the rock-on-stake method as you describe. The reason I do this is because I’ve had rocks cause serious abrasion to the guylines in only one night when it was windy and the resulting movement caused the rock to “saw” through a guyline. One morning with my Duplex I found that one corner was hanging on by a thread, quite literally.

Skurka’s method you mentioned is something like a modified trucker’s hitch finished with a half-hitch on a bight.