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Boundary Waters / Quetico Discussion Forums >> Strictly Gear - Gear specific reviews and ideas. >> New tent: Sierra Designs Flash
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Message started by azalea on Oct 20th, 2016 at 9:58pm

Title: Re: New tent: Sierra Designs Flash
Post by azalea on Oct 29th, 2016 at 4:18pm
I bought the SD Flash 3 FL.  In doing my research, I read various articles disucssing tent quality. This one was pretty good,   (You need to Login or Register .  I have kept my tents for years and not bought high-end tents, so more often than not I have been using an older tents with a PU coating. That may explain the problem I have experienced of water wicking through the wet base of my tents when something like a sleeping bags or clothes were in contact overnight.

Some initial reactions based on setting the tent up in the living room.

It has two pole sleaves over the doors.  Each runs over the door side of the tent, they do not cross. So they only extert pressure on keeping the corners apart in that one direction (length).  If not staked out, the tent would not be stretched out to its full width.  This is only an issue if not staked and given I got the 3-man for use by two, not an issue for this purchase. The advantage of this design is it gives great headroom over the entired width of the tent (given there is no side-to-side pole sloping down).  At 86 oz (77 without carry sacks) it is decenty light for a large tent.  Has clothes line across the top, with a white little sack for putting a headlamp in, turning it into a "frosted" light.

It is a two-walled tents, with the inner wall attached to the outer.  The inner wall is mostly just mesh.  The two walls meet at the pole sleeves which is true for most tents.  There are also a couple about 3" attachments that have the inner wall hanging from the fly at the top. The fly is held up by two additional two poles that are attached to each other to form a cross.  These are above the fly, rest on the door poles, and hold the the fly up, including the awnings over the doors.

There should be no problem with the inner tent wall and the ends getting any wetness as those ends are covered by the fly to form a vestibule.  Even if the vestibule is not staked out, it can just hang covering that part of the tent.  What is not clear is how what the sides of the tent will get, where the doors are.  They are only covered by an awning, but are supposedly waterproof.  Time will tell if they are susceptible to the wicking effect. Given the awnings and the ability to roll up the vestibule, this tent will supply better ventilation under most any circumstances than any tent I have had.

A selling point was it was quicker to setup (no spearate fly) and can be set up in the rain without the inner tent getting wet because the fly will be covering it during setup.  Those seem to both be hype.  Setup is like setting up a regular tent, where you have layed the fly lying on top of the body as you set it up.

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