Standards Watch: Mike Cecot-Scherer on Tent Design

Great stuff.

Interesting discussion.  Clearly he knows what he’s doing and what he wants to accomplish on the design side!  If I had need of a bulletproof tent, I might consider one.  But since I only hike occasionally in the gentle Sierra Nevadas, I don’t need to lug around that much bulletproof structure!  Choice is a great thing though.

I was sad to see that his website looks like it was designed in 1998.  And not great copy editing either, which is another pet peeve of mine.  It’s hard to take a company seriously if they can’t represent themselves with proper English.  Both seem like bad habits common to cottage gear makers;  good on the mechanical engineering side, bad with other things.

The Terra Nova Voyager had a good solution to the storm-proofing vs ventilation problem. It has two zips in the vestibule. Zip them both down to create a vent. Zip them both down further to create a door. A Duomid with two zips coming down from the vent might be my perfect tent. No more reaching past fabric covered in condensation to find the bottom of the zip.

Interesting article, and he clearly knows tents. But over 4 pounds for the smallest 2-person ultralight backpacking tent? I think i will just continue to muddle through with tents that weigh WAY less.

More research needs to be done for polyester tent fabric. Polyester is more UV resistant than nylon, does not stretch as much dry or wet and does not retain water like silnylon.

As for design it’s hard to beat Tarptent for innovation of useful designs. And designs that permit fly and inner tent to be set up (say, in a rain storm) as one unit are to be applauded. Too many interesting designs ignore this and at best require you to crawl under an erected fly to clip in the inner tent when setting up in rain or snow.