Teaser: Sierra Designs High Route 1 FL Tent — Skurka

[Boyan B]

I don’t think Franco’s method requires the presence of the inner to guide the process. The rectangle is formed by the two pitch lock corners and the two opposing stakeout points on the fly. This makes the process very similar to the way you would pitch the HR1, except you would need two more stakes to pull out the vestibules. Decisions, decisions…

[Boyan B]

DELETED – duplicate post

[Henry Shires / Tarptent]

Franco’s method is NOT the official Tarptent recommended method. It is not reliable, especially without the interior, and while it can result in a good setup it does require practice to get an intuitive feel for what you’re trying to achieve.   Our official method, which works with or without the interior, is shown here and always results in a taut pitch once you’ve achieved the initial 4-stake rectangle –>

-H

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

Can the SS be pitched that way even when the fly is being set up independently of the inner tent, like if it were being used without the inner tent during non-buggy seasons?

I still have not seen a SS, so this is educated speculation. But in that video, it looks like you utilize the rectangular footprint of the inner tent to give the shelter shape…

Yes and no. Franco’s method is quite similar to how I set up the SS2. This method does work just as well without the inner, but only because the inner isn’t really guiding the setup as it appears in the video. Rather, Franco is executing guesswork with extraordinary success that most users are unlikely to replicate without a lot of practice.

Play-by-play:
0:29 – The tent is pulled out on a natural line of tension, but actually you want 2-3″ of slack here unless you overcompensate later (discussed later). Also, the angle can be tricky because the inner floor isn’t parallel to the edge of the fly but rather rotated 5-10 degrees (due to the struts on some corners). Because of these struts, while the inner tent floor is a rectangle, the overlying fly shape is a diamond. So you need to keep this in mind if you’re trying to match the orientation of your sleeping area to the slope of the ground.

0:41 – This angle isn’t a right angle like a typical mid. As mentioned, the main “rectangle” of the fly is actually a diamond so this angle is actually about 95 degrees. Also you probably should leave ~4-6″ of slack here. Franco again doesn’t leave any slack but makes up for this by leaving major slack at the 4th stake and having guessed angles that fortuitously work for this.

0:47 – This is the major bit of estimating. Previously, the stakeouts at 0:29 and 0:41 were pulled taut so the viewer assumes this is being done at the 4th corner as well but actually Franco is leaving a lot of slack here, in addition to guessing the angles because they’re not 90. I prefer to leave a little slack at each corner, but either way you have to do some guesswork.

0:53 – Franco goes right ahead and starts inserting the poles, which is not how I do it but it works here because Franco has nailed the stake positions. At this point, I stake out the two vestibules using natural lines of tension (for the first time) and then inspect the overall shape. It needs to be a hexagon that is symmetrical on the axis dictated by the strut corners. So you stand at the shortest side and look across the tent to see if the opposite short side is parallel with this short side. Adjust stakes until it is. Even if this is perfect the tent could still be wonky because nothing is dictating the distance between the two strut corners, but if you stake out the first 4 stakes at roughly 90 degrees then usually the distance between the strut corners isn’t way off. If it is, you’ll notice when you open the tent and see the inner either very loose or stretched (more likely).

1:32 – Franco’s guesses for both slack and angles were perfect, so the tent goes up perfectly. For most users though, the tent would look wonky at this point and they wouldn’t know what to adjust, so they’d start guessing. It’s more difficult to evaluate the symmetry with the poles erected, which is why I do it based on the 6 stake hexagon.

With this method, the most important thing isn’t becoming good at estimating, but rather becoming good at evaluating how your estimates are off so you efficiently identify and correct.

To be clear, there is no inner tent rectangle that is guiding Franco’s setup, which I believe the fly provides for the HR1 because it has a rectangle (rather than hexagon) base. Because of the stretchy nature of how the SS inner is connected to the fly and because of the fancy geometry, it’s possible to pitch the SS in a manner that is way off using Franco’s approach.

Back on the High Route 1
As far as I am aware, the HR1 is the only 2 pole mid that still utilizes a rectangle base and thus uniquely retains most of the setup simplicity of a typical 1 pole rectangular mid. It would be neat to see a variant of the HR1 that retains this rectangular base but positions the sleeper/inner tent at a diagonal to restore vestibule space at 2 corners. Would also work well for taller sleepers. This seems pretty neat.

 

 

[Franco Darioli]

“Franco is executing guesswork with extraordinary success ”
To give some background on that video, I had received the box from TT about half an hour before. A mate was visiting so I set it up the way Henry had done on a video clip he sent me. Somehow his set up looked odd to me and in fact did not work all that well when I tried it the first time.
My mate left so I grabbed the camera and filmed myself doing it the way I had been doing it in my head since I had seen the shelter set up first.
So what you see in that video is the first time I did it that way , I still do it the same way taking about the same time to do it, obviously a bit longer on hard ground or if using rocks.
Why it is so easy for me to do but hard for others I have no idea but I often see folk overthinking about setting up tents , I just do it….
Plenty of other examples in my You Tube channel ( Franco Darioli)

[Boyan B]

@dandydan, don’t know about the estimating.  @franco can speak to this better than me, but he seems to be setting up the floor as a rectangle, the apparent few degree tilt toward the aslphalt/concrete looks like a lens paralax artifact to me. Specifically at 1:34 it does not appear to be there.  Also, on the TT website the inner (yellow rectangle) is shown as perfectly parallel to the short edges – at least for the SS1.  Also see this video,

where at 0:05 you can clearly see the innere edge parallel to the fly edge, and again at 0:11 for the other edge. The SS2 does look to be a few degrees off, not sure of this is a CAD thing or an actual difference.  The Youtube CAD video does show the offset you are talking about

As a former owner you of course have a much better feel than me for this.

After spending far more time on this than I should I now understand better the concern expressed by @askurka.  If the inner is not clipped in, do you loose the ability to pitch the rectangle because of the absence of natural tension lines due to the presence of the vestibule “excess fabric”? Does not look like this is the case from Franco’s video, plus the attachment of the inner to the fly is not exactly super robust to allow the correct definition of tension lines.

One of these days I am going to stop analyzing and just buy one of the two.  Or maybe I should just decide to eat the $20 or so shipping costs, order both and keep one.  Hmmm…

 

[Franco Darioli]

hi Andrew,

I missed your comment somehow.

Makes no difference whatsoever  if pitched integral or fly only.

As I posted on a different forum months ago, I see no close similarities between your shelter and the SS 1/2 apart from the fact that both are some sort of mid shelter.

Different geometry and structure.

This photo ,that I posted today at White Blaze today, should make it easier to understand the difference :

as you can see, the SS2 (the 1 is similar) has an hexagonal shape with several panels , having the strongest anchoring/tensioning  points at the four cardinal points.

 

 

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