Re: [Paddlewise] tents

Hi, You wrote:
>Yah, you have created a problem for me. I did go out this weekend and looked
>at the North Face VE-25 expedition double wall tent. Need I say much more
>than I am hooked! What a marvelous tent! Now to attract the money to buy
>one. Man is it nice. 9 lbs 4oz, sleeps three, with 49inches of verticle sitting
>room
>and 84 inches horizontal floor area. Tested to what they report an unbelievable
>
>200,000 cycles. It is a new double-vested design with stainless steel zippers
>and reported to be fantastically stable in high winds and resistant to snow
>loading
>and the stresses of expedition use.
>
>This is not much of a story but it could lead to many.
>
>Ouch,,,,,,,,, $725.00 Canadian
>
>Cheers,
>
>Philip

I have a North Face MTN 24, smaller but with very similar construction to
the VE-25, and generally I have found this to be a superb tent, particularly
solid, stable and quiet in very high winds .... but there are a few niggles. 

When I bought this tent a couple of years ago, TNF did not tape seal the
seams on either the fly or the ground sheet, instead supplying a (small!)
tube of liquid sealant to apply to the seams. This is particularly necessary
for the groundsheet, which is designed with a flat floor stitched at ground
level to the bathtub sides (rather than a one piece floor/bathtub sides), so
if there is no sealant, or if it comes off, the floor gets wet.

The poles on my tent go through sleeves, which have possibly two design
faults. Firstly where the poles cross the sleeves stop, so that each pole
has to be fed through three short sleeves, which can be a fiddle in
darkness/wild weather. I have used other tents (Terra Nova/Wild country
Quasar, Hyperspace) which have one continuous sleeve for each pole, with one
sleeve penetrating the other where the poles cross. Secondly, the sleeves
are made of solid fabric, rather than mesh, which limits ventilation. I have
found that this tent in wet conditions suffers from a lot more condensation
than similar designs without mesh sleeves.

Maybe the seams are now taped, and the ventilation problem is only apparent
in cold wet climates :-(, but I would check out these features and consider
them carefully before buying.

Oh and another warning - I left my tent in a loose bag in storage for a
couple of months and was appalled to find that mice (in this case Apodemus
sylvaticus) have a taste for TNF flysheet material, which unfortunately
temporarily improved the ventilation problem :-(~

HTH

Cheers
Colin
______________________________________________________
Dr Colin Calder
Centre for CBL in Land Use and Environmental Sciences (CLUES)
MacRobert Building, Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, AB24 5UA, 
UK, Scotland
______________________________________________________

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