Outwell Montana 12

Pitching

On arrival at the camp site, we laid out a couple of tarps (4m x 7m footprint) to act as groundsheet protectors and laid out the tent. It wasn’t windy so pitching could be carried out by two, but in windy conditions three people are recommended. 
The tent is pitched ‘all-in-one’, that is, flysheet with sewn-in groundsheet and interior bedroom compartments. So no worries pitching in the pouring rain.

*** Outwell Montana 12 Family Tent ***

We did the following:

1) Inserting the 5 assembled roof poles (which are pre-formed to a curve) and laying down the sets of assembled side poles along side. 
2) Have one person at each side of the tent and then starting at one end (of the tent), fitting each side pole to the roof pole, clipping the tent to the pole and finally inserting a pin into the bottom of the pole. It is not necessary to stress anything in doing this because there is lots of adjustment in the pin system on one side of the tent. 
3) Peg out two guy ropes attached to the end of the tent to hold up the pole section and the end of the tent. 
4) Repeat at the other end 
5) With the two ends assembled, we then assembled the three remaining poles sections clipping on the tent and fitting the pins.
6) A quick tension of the pin adjustment and you can begin pegging out the tent.
7) Start with all the pegs in a line across one end and then
8) with each pole, walk away from the end, pegging out the tent as you go and attaching further guy-lines. This approach means that the tent poles are set at the correct distances apart and by the time you reach the other end, the tent is essentially pitched, needing perhaps only minor adjustments. The groundsheet protector can act as a guide for this.
9) Final stage is to peg out guy-lines for the end vents.

I guess you can get away without pegging out all of the guy lines, but in windy weather I would recommend fixing them all to prevent damage. I am sure that there are other ways to pitch the tent, and one modification might be to peg down the tent in windy weather as soon as you roll it out.

The tent has many vent openings along each side at roof level and these are held open by a fabric strip and Velcro. These allow ventilation without rain ingress, There is a door on each side of the tent, and four 3-way windows (closed with mesh, closed no mesh or open with or without mesh), each window has a blind. One strange thing is that the zips don’t go across the bottom of the doors - but remember this is a sewn in groundsheet tent and some ventilation is needed - Maybe that’s the reason. One door also has a small rain canopy fitted held in place by a fibreglass pole. Next years model will see this increased in size apparently. Note the tent was not supplied with poles to form the door into a canopy, but these are available from Outwell for about £8.

Canopy

The optional side canopy is great, It is a flysheet that forms a 3m x 2m covered space over one side of the tent, held up by two sets of metal and fibre glass poles and a long section of fabric that goes over the tent and is held in place by guy lines attached by hooks to the pin system of the main tent poles. Pitching is simply carried out by installing the poles and then taking the long section of flysheet over the tent roof. The whole canopy is then held in place by a series of guy-lines. This is much clearer in the photographs! Due to the size of the Montana 12, the guys that go over the tent were too short, but that’s easily fixed by replacing them with a couple of Outwell fluorescent 4m guy-lines (about £4 for 4). This canopy is big enough to have a table out with your stove and some chairs on the other side. Just take care to make sure the rain doesn’t change direct though! Having the canopy meant that we could leave stuff out without risk of it getting wet overnight.

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