Thread: Designing the best back country tent in the market - Need you help

In my earlier description I didn’t directly address the issue of weight, only referring in passing to the upper limit of 1.5kg, as it had been specified in the original post as the starting point for this exercise. Without a target weight there is no need to make any compromises or balance any aspect of the size, strength and features, or the necessity for using light-weight materials at elevated cost. Instead the tent can have it all, and this thread changes to simply what features you likes to have in a 1-person tent for hunting trips. To imply that I hadn’t considered the weight is wrong. It now seems that it is necessary to say on what grounds I think the design would stay under 1.5kg.

First up there have been a proliferation of 1P tents come into the market in the past few years that are under 1.5kg; too many to list online links here. I even weighed my Macpac Microlight the other day and was surprised that the example I have here came in at exactly 1.5kg packed weight, and this is neither a new design or an expensive one. Let’s instead look at the two double-skinned tents on which my concept was a somewhat enlarged composite; the Terra Nova Laser Competition and replacement Compact and the Hilleberg Enan. We can look at the published weights for these very similar shapes as starting points along with some dimensions and then I’ll make educated estimates on how making a similar shape of tent larger as I was proposing would add to these starting weights.

Here is the Enan along with some specifications:



Packed weight: 1.2kg (flysheet & inner 884g, Pole 166g, 8 Pegs 76g, sundries 74g)
Inner / vestibule floor area: 1.7m² / 0.8m²
Pole length/diameter: 193cm / 9mm
Outside width / depth / height: 2.4m / 1.75m / 1.0m

Laser Compact:



Packed weight: 1.06kg,
Inner / vestibule floor area: unspecfied
Pole diameter: 8.7mm and 2 short end poles
Outside width / depth / height: 2.4m / 1.55m / 1.0m

In the concept tent where the depth is being increased 26-42% over these two tents for the large vestibule and the height by 20%, it follows from geometry that the length of the main pole will increase by 22-29%, and with the pole diameter stepping up to 10mm it will consequently weigh about 260grams, an increase of 100gr. The 2-piece end poles being longer will weigh 25gr more. The width is staying the same, as is the inner footprint, so the height change only applies to the amount of fabric used in the inner walls but not to the heavier material used in the tub floor. The above changes both apply to the amount of fabric to be used in the fly though, bearing in mind that an amount of the weight of any tent is in the fittings, seams & hems etc. that in some cases remain fixed as the area of fabric increases. From this the estimate is that the material increase to accommodate the larger size adds a further 100grams.

Adding things up takes the weight for the concept tent to somewhere between 1285gr and 1425gr with the difference between these figures and the 1500gram limit going into my other preferences of having a more robust material for the floor, a more complex inner door, double entrances for the fly, and some strengthening dictated by the potential for higher wind-loading. The weight available for these may be more as the promise of no limit on materials may be able to claw back some of the increases.