Backcountry Pilot

[Bravo Hotel offline]

I want to buy a new tent for the summers festivities. Does anyone have a super lighweight 2 person that they like? I tried doing a search but it wouldnt let me.

[WWhunter offline]

Where are you in MN? Easiest might just be to run down to Cabela's or the nearest Gander Mountain and take a look.
I have purchased many different tents over the years, mostly for hunting trips and and have good luck with Eureka tents. There are much more expensive tents that are lighter but I haven't been let down by the mid priced Eureka's. Granted I have spent many a days under a military poncho made into a tent. Guess all I look for is a place to keep away from the bugs and rain.
WW (fellow mini-sotan)

[OregonMaule offline]

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5605&p=71440&hilit=tent#p71440

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5314&hilit=tents+tent

[Bravo Hotel offline]

I am 45 Mins from Cabelas. I guess that would be easy enough. Give me an excuse to fly over there. I slept in an abandoned Shorts Cargo plane one time. That was all fine and dandy until it started to hail at 1:00am. Sounded like a thousand people banging on the roof with metal hammers.

[OregonMaule offline]

I want to buy a new tent for the summers festivities. Does anyone have a super lighweight 2 person that they like? I tried doing a search but it wouldnt let me.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5605&p=71440&hilit=tent#p71440

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5314&hilit=tents+tent

[mtv offline]

Don't bother with Cabelas. Find an REI store, or Scheels. They have good quality stuff, built for backpacking.

MTV

[Tyler offline]

REI is a bad site, at some point they are going to cost me a lot of money... Great stuff though!

Also I don't know how much you know about tents but for me a 2 person tent means that you really have to like the person you are with. I might look for a 3 person tent for a little more room if you can. My dad and I have used a 4 person tent that was great. It's a coleman I think, downsize is that it's heavy but when he bought it it wasn't for airplane camping.

[Skystrider offline]

Sierra Designs - Clip Flashlight 2 - Less than $150 - 4.5 lbs - 2 person





See review at this link.

http://www99.epinions.com/review/Sierra_Designs_Clip_Flashlight_Tent_HCST017/content_122746015364

I have had nothing but good experiences with Sierra Designs. They just recently repaired zippers on my 15 year old Comet CD for nothing. I also have their Wu Hu 4 person base camp tent. Excellent!

[Headoutdaplane offline]

I am hearing good things about Apache tents, specifically that they use heavy duty zippers and are very easy and quick to set up www.apachetents.com, however, if I had the money, I would go with Hillberg tents, very expensive, but spacious, and you can take down the tent while staying under the rain fly.

[robw56 offline]

My tent isn't anything fancy but it does its job just fine. It's an Alpine Design 3 person tent. Its not super light, Its 7lbs but thats fine for airplane camping. It's easy to set up annd takedown by yourself, and by paying attention to how it was rolled up when I fiirst unpacked it I have never had any trouble getting it back into its bag which isn't very big. And best of all I bought it on sale for 30 bucks at Sports Authority, not bad. If you look online its original price is 64.99.

http://www.sportsauthority.com/product/ ... Id=3514906

[EZFlap offline]

I want to buy a new tent for the summers festivities. Does anyone have a super lighweight 2 person that they like? I tried doing a search but it wouldnt let me.

Judging by your avatar photo of a J-3, the small and light factor is easily understandable. I know there are a lot of professionally made tents out there that are designed for the purpose. However, in a J-3 which is tight on space and payload... do not overlook the simplicity of using your airplane as part of the tent, which offers great savings in weight and packed size.

People have been throwing a ;large tarp over the wing to make a quickie shelter for many years... but this will scratch up nice fabric pretty quickly. So taking an extra step of figuring out some kind of padded stand-offs or soft foam protection that doesn't take up too much space might be a big winner. Bu designing it carefully you can use the cockpit as the "vestibule".

Another even more compact way is to use the two struts on one side as your support structure. Velcro or lash your minimalist tent (a conical shaped tent with mesh sides and a tarp floor) under the struts on one side. You can get fancy and add rain fly panels and a zippered door. Sew in your grommets or straps to accept the stakes in front of and behind the wing. The cost of having someone sew this up for you will be less than a commercial good quality tent.

Believe it or not, this will yield a much more spacious tent than a commercial tent. You should be able to stand up under the tallest section under the front strut/forward spar attach. The max length of the tent will be about 2/3 of one wing panel, maybe 10 or 12 feet.

This type of tent will have no poles or pole attach hardware. only a handful of stakes and some grommets and some velcro strips. The upside is smallest possible pack size and lowest possible weight. The downside is that it relies on the aircraft tiedowns for stability, and high winds will turn the tent into a concave "sail" much faster than the (presumably) convex shape of an internally braced tent.

But for minimalist J-3 type camping I don't think you can get any smaller or lighter than the Wing-a-Bago. Myself and a few others discussed this extensively over on the Taylorcraft forum a year or two ago. You'll certainly spend some time designing it for your airplane and figuring out the details, but you will save a little money and have more room than people who bought $350 commercial tents.

[EZFlap offline]

I want to buy a new tent for the summers festivities. Does anyone have a super lighweight 2 person that they like? I tried doing a search but it wouldnt let me.

Judging by your avatar photo of a J-3, the small and light factor is easily understandable. I know there are a lot of professionally made tents out there that are designed for the purpose. However, in a J-3 which is tight on space and payload... do not overlook the simplicity of using your airplane as part of the tent, which offers great savings in weight and packed size.

People have been throwing a (large) tarp over the wing to make a quickie shelter for many years... but this will scratch up nice fabric pretty quickly. So taking an extra step of figuring out some kind of padded stand-offs or soft foam protection that doesn't take up too much space might be a big winner. By designing it carefully you can use the cockpit as the "vestibule".

Another even more compact way is to use the two struts on one side as your support structure. Velcro or lash your minimalist tent (a conical shaped tent with mesh sides and a tarp floor) under the struts on one side. You can get fancy and add rain fly panels and a zippered door. Sew in your grommets or straps to accept the stakes in front of and behind the wing. The cost of having someone sew this up for you will be less than a commercial good quality tent.

Believe it or not, this will yield a much more spacious tent than a commercial tent. You should be able to stand up under the tallest section under the front strut/forward spar attach. The max length of the tent will be about 2/3 of one wing panel, maybe 10 or 12 feet.

This type of tent will have no poles or pole attach hardware. only a handful of stakes and some grommets and some velcro strips. The upside is smallest possible pack size and lowest possible weight. The downside is that it relies on the aircraft tiedowns for stability, and high winds will turn the tent into a concave "sail" much faster than the (presumably) convex shape of an internally braced tent. But for minimalist J-3 type camping I don't think you can get any smaller or lighter than this clever little Wing-a-Bago. Myself and a few others discussed this extensively over on the Taylorcraft forum a year or two ago.

You'll certainly spend some time designing it for your airplane and figuring out the details, but you will save a little money and have more room than people who bought $350 commercial tents.

[robw56 offline]

There was a guy on the supercub.org site that made his own fully enclosed tent that slipped over the wing, it looked like a pretty cool setup. You might want to ask the question over there and see what they say.

[Zzz]

REI is a bad site, at some point they are going to cost me a lot of money... Great stuff though!

The nice thing about REI is that you can return the item for full refund, forever, if you are not satisfied with its performance.

I usually pay full retail for stuff to have this guarantee.

There was a guy on the supercub.org site that made his own fully enclosed tent that slipped over the wing, it looked like a pretty cool setup. You might want to ask the question over there and see what they say.

I think when people see that, they always think it's a fantastic way to save the weight of the tent poles, but everyone I know likes to take off for breakfast, leaving their camp setup. Tough to do with a wing-tent.

I second the Sierra Designs for quality and weight. I have the Hyperlight AST 2-person. It's well built, but the footprint is an odd shape. I think I prefer just a classic rectangle.

[Oldcrowe offline]

If my wife hadn't reciently inventoried my collection I would be adding one of these http://www.rei.com/product/794287on my next trip to REI.

From the collection my favorite is a NEMO Losi-3 (it is really a great tent), worst is a Big Agnes something or other.

I was there and the SC.org wing tent mentioned was neat but would have been a swamp in the rain especially if there was any wind at all.

My advise is that unless you are young and flexible in the mornings is to pick a side entry tent with dual doors, vs a slide in end entry one, much easier to keep your shoes outside and pivet 90 degrees vs 180 for me anyway. There are some pretty neat ones on the market some even single walled which saves space and weight.

[patrol guy offline]

I had what I thought was a great light weight Mountain Hardware single walled tent. It survived (dry) a T storm at New Holstein, when a lot of tents turned into swamps. It worked great for almost two years...then it fell apart. It was glued, not sewn. I called them, not expecting any favors, but Mountain Hardware said the glued ones didn't work out so they gave me full price credit with them. I ended up with a bigger fly style tent.

[mountainmatt offline]

I was in the tent buying business last spring and looked at a lot of tents. I do a fair amount of mountaineering and backpacking, so I wanted a light tent, but roomy enough for those long fly-in camping trips too. After looking, I chose the Marmot Limelight 3.

Here's the reasons why.
1) I wanted a 3 person tent, which is a 2 person tent with some room. On flying trips I tend to bring a little more stuff and I didn't want to sleep on all that stuff. The 3 person tent is great for that!
2) I wanted a dome tent. I have some nice ultra lightweight tents that make you feel like you crawling in a sleeping bag and are great for that... just sleeping. But when your stuck in the weather, sitting up is important to me. A nice dome tent makes being stuck in a tent a little better.
3) 2 doors, I'm not waking up after 10 beers and crawling over my wife cause I'm about to piss my bag.
4) 2 Vestibules, very nice for keeping the outside stuff organized and dry.
5) Construction, I have had Marmot stuff in the past and they do a great job of building a quality product. After spending a summer in this tent it still looks and works like new.
6) Weight, the limelight 3 is pretty dang light considering. This tent DOES include the footprint and gear loft in that weight, most tents don't. At 6.5lbs it's a great compromise.
7) Price, with the 20% off coupon and some dividends, I think I picked this tent up for a little over $150. Not bad!



Packing it in 8 miles (3800ft gain) and I couldn't tell much of difference between the extra few pounds.


Take my advice, a few extra pounds is worth it for a larger tent. After you spend your summer in a 3lb micro tent you'll be buying another one. They look so good on paper, but after 5 days in the rain you'll want to stab yourself with a rusty camp axe.

My 0.02

[Zzz]

Steepandcheap.com runs this one once or twice a day:

http://cl.ly/0F3h1A2M331k1b27183C

(That's a screenshot I took since Steep and Cheap is one-deal-at-a-time and changes several times a day.

[tfcub offline]

Check out WWW. CUBGEARSTORE.com for all of your light weight back country flying needs

[shortfielder offline]

I wanted 4 season for cold wx opps. Wanted to be able to close off the vents for high wind dust storms(Utah, AZ., NM) Enough room that if I get wethered in for a couple days I could move around. Light colored to reflect heat in the SW. Light wt. for all things considers. Outside covered storeage. (More handy than I had imagined). Able to stand up in it.
Little pricey, at least for me, but have been happy with it.
http://www.cabelas.com/view-tents-cabel ... nt-1.shtml