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Can anyone tell me an easier way to erect the vango columbia 600. 

We had a practice run yesterday.  the dvd says to place the poles down and pop in the ring and pins.  We popped them in on one side but couldnt do the other, with fear of tearing the tent, and the only way we could do it was when we got the poles stood up ready to pull out was then put the ring and pin in the other side.  my husband had had problems in holding the poles and while trying to do this. 

Has anyone any easier ideas of doing this??????

We've now pitched our Columbia 600 3 times, and it definitely gets easier with practice. We now put the poles in one side, and do the ring and pin whilst laying the tent on the floor, then do the other side. It's always a bit of a struggle to get other side ring and pin in, but it does not rip, I normally hold the flysheet at the pole curve joins, so that other half can pull the flysheet down to reach the pins more easily.

There are others on here that have have had the same tent for much longer, and therefore more experience.

Hope you love your Columbia 600 as much as we love ours!

we know exactly how you feel. first time out i trapped my finger between pole and pin, bloody mrs laughed her head off!!!!... it is a bit of a challenge but we don't struggle too much now we have done it a few times. we lay it all out and pull poles down to the pins. great tent tho, can't fault ours.

first outing with the canopy  , we put the wrong poles in the wrong sleeve and spent 15 mins scratching our heads why it wouldn't go up right ha ha ha numpteys eh.

Having tried the pitching technique used by Yeoman's Outdoors for the Outwell Montana we gave up and went back to the Vango video method. Much better in our opinion. We put in the poles from the front working backwards, sliding each pole through the sleeve to put it on one pin first and then back through the sleeve to put the other pin in. You do gain confidence with practice. We then lift/drag the tent and poles to the rear of the footprint groundsheet, peg all the back and then lift and extend forwards. We found that pegging only the rear corners was not enough as extending the tent put too much pressure and weakened the hold of these 2 pegging points.

The tent goes up very smoothly and we've pitched it quite a few times now...

Helen