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Today being a fine sunny day I decided to practise pitching my tent in the garden...the forst time I have pitched a tent since my schooldays and then we worked together.

The tent in question is a Hi Gear Ion 3. Here are the trials and tribulations.

Firstly it was not easy as the tent poles were nearly the same width as the garden which didn't give me a lot of room to maneovre. The tent was new out of the carry bag and even though laid as flat as i could there were still folds in it and loops hidden in the folds so that missed them with the poles when i threaded them through.  At the top of the tent I also threaded the poles through the wrong holes which i didn;t discover till i'd bent it up into a dome. After it was up with the poles through all the right holes I marked each set of loops with a different colour permanent marker. The joins in the poles kept coming apart as I threaded them through or got snagged on the loops....I just persevered.

Hooray the inner tent was up but getting the flysheet over it by myself was an effort. At first I thought theyd given me the wrong sized flysheet as it seemed to short but once i'd pegged it out  it does cover the inner tent.

I did take note of how the inner tent was folded but after the hassle of 5 attempts to thread the poles and uttering a number of choice words I had forgotten! At the moment its drying in the conservatory as i wiped the dirt and grass off the bottom of the groundsheet....i'll have to struggle with it later.

The tent pegs that were supplied seemed a bit flimsy so i'll see if i can get some stronger ones, they were steel not plastic.

Question, the guy lines seem to come out a long way from the tent...is this usual? I wouldn't want other people to trip up on them on a campsite or to take up unnecessary space.

There will be plently of room for me to stretch out in sleeping bag inside. Was hoping for bigger storage pockets but hey ho....the tent was a bargain.

I have taken a couple of pics for you all to laugh at. Unfortunately due to time constraints I couldn;t wait for the sun to get fully round into the garden so they may look a but dark.

I doubt even when i'm fully practised at it that i'get the tent up in its advertised 5 minute pitching time, i'm assuming thats for a 3 man assembly team:-)

Happy camping folks

Well done.  It's scary trying to pitch for the first time as the instructions never seem to make sense.  Our tent is so big it doesn't fit in the garden, so we had to go to a park which was very worrying as people stop to talk and tell you how much trouble you are going to have getting it all back in the bag - all useful stuff like that.

We are off this weekend in two separate cars and I am due to get to site first, so am going to have a go at pitching it myself.  Hopefully I can manage to get the footprint down and pegged, then lay the tent on top and no more before OH gets there if I take my time

Yay......it was a struggle but i managed to get everything back in the carry bag and I managed to find several vidoes on youtube explaining how to tighten guylines

Well done on getting your Quebec pitched  loftus.....did you remember to let the kids out of the car afterwards?

Quote: Originally posted by steddiguy on 15/10/2009

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Well done on getting your Quebec pitched  loftus.....did you remember to let the kids out of the car afterwards?

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Congratulations on your erection Steddiguy   

You will get quicker each time you pitch it. You certainly did the right thing with a trial pitch in the privacy of your own garden, rather than waiting till you're on a campsite with an audience.

To save the bedroom floor getting muddied up, buy a cheap polyethylene tarp & cut it to the exact size of the tent (including the porch), then turn two inches over & get someone to sew it for you, or failing that, use double sided tape to stick the hem. This will give you a groundsheet in the porch, and keep the bottom of the bedroom pod clean & dry, so that it doesn't mess up the tent fabric when you fold it.

Have you got the guy ropes worked out now?

Thanx for your comments everybody

JK-yes i think i understand guylines better, there are enough videos on youtube showing how to tighten guylines and you can find out how to do just about anything on google these days

Pokey-i can't wait for next season to start using the tent for real. Being a night worker id have slept in the tent yesterday if id had a sleeping bag and air bed, it was warm enough. Was hoping to have another practise pitch today but its a damp drizzley day. Thanx for the video link