Tuesday 3 July 2012

Pitching the Vango Astoria 600

What fun Lorena and I had with our new tent today when we gave it a trial pitching, at least we now know how not to do it, we'll do a lot better next time but it was great fun!

This was also my first effort at making a time lapse video recording so that's another skill I developed this afternoon, that and tunnel tent pitching! ;-)

7 comments:

  1. Nice vid....I am guessing this inn't for the tandem tour!

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  2. Indeed not, it will be challenging enough without this thing in tow! Thanks for the interest!

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  3. Did you camp with astoria? how did you find it? i'm interested in some reviews ;-) thank's

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    1. It's not been used in anger yet but the summer is looming, I hope!

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  4. Thank's for your kind reply. Could i ask you your impressions and if it is simple to pitch (i've seen your video, thank's for having posted)? I think that it is quite similar to vango tigris, so the quality should be ok and it seems sturdy also in bad weather because it has two steel poles..

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  5. I bought this tent last week and it is a F"$%^ nightmare to put up! The quoted time of 40 minutes is a joke. It took me 2.5 hours. Admittedly I did most of it on my own but I had a real issue with the poles. Getting the pins in the bottom, even with the tension straps fully loosened off, was virtually impossible. The creaking noise from the poles made me think they were about to snap. I eventually resorted splitting some poles and then putting the pins in before rejoining the poles. When I finally had them in place my wife came out to help put it upright. It was very windy at the time and with the size of the tent there was a lot of windage and it acted like a sail!

    Getting it back down again was time-consuming. It took me and my dad around an hour and the tent seemed to have expanded as it was very reluctant to fit back in the bag. Again, it didn't help that it was very windy and once the guys and pegs were removed the tent want to head up the Yellow Brick Road to Oz.

    In saying all that once it is up it is very impressive. The central living area is huge.

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    1. Yes, it can be a bit of a handful can't it! I definitely agree that the quoted pitching time is optimistic except maybe in the hands of a couple of experts who have done it many times and it perfect conditions.

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