By: 40metreman55 Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 25/03/2010
A great tent. Bought at Go Outdoors on a special offer. Really easy to erect, did'nt have any trouble with the ring and pin like some have posted. Did have a problem with the front pole, but some minor adjustments to the guys sorted that. I know its a 5 man tent, but we leave the divider out and use the bedroom as a storage and dressing area. It is more than ample for the two of us.
As has been posted before, the wife tends to take enough clothes for a fortnight and Imelda Marcos is a non starter in the shoe dept. (Nine pairs, on a three day, two night stay in the Peak District). All in all, a good tent. Weatherproof, stable, comfortable and I would definitely recommend it.
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By: GGould Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 10/09/2009
09/09/2009 Just back having used this tent for the first time.
Bought it from Go Outdoors for £69.99 two weeks ago. Pitched the tent in the back garden to check it out and was pleasantly surprised to find the tent was dry inside having been pitched for three days in constant rain.
Used the tent for the fist time this week and was amazed at how robust it was!
Arrived at the site around 18.15 on Sunday. It was raining with a light wind, and two of us had the tent pitched and ready in 35 mins.
The flaps on the bottom of the outer tent were a wee bit tricky to understand how they should be pegged down in the proper sequence to make the tent wind/water tight, but having used our initiative it was ok.
Flap on the front door of the tent could be doing with having a loop in the middle of it to help secure it and stop it from being blown out. Will be puting an eyelet in place to rectify this.
The tent stood up to strong winds on Monday night and Tuesday. (estimated 60+ mph gusts) Although it was a bit hairy at times with one side of the tent taking the bulk of the strain and flexing pretty heavily, we used the two guy ropes for securing the porch poles to secure this side and the tent stood up to the challenge.
The tent had plenty of room for two adults and two dogs.(5 berth? Maybe - if you lay in the one place without moving for 8 hours, otherwise.I would suggest 2 adults and two kids - max!) The porch area was spacious and when the main door was up it was excellent! We both used camp beds but unfortunately one of them damaged the groundsheet slightly, so I wouldn't recommend using them! (Duct tape should fix this!) Inner tent securing elastics were a bit tight, so left the second set from the bottom un-attached. In spite of the weather, the tent was completely dry inside for the three nights it was used.
Overall, I would highly recommend this tent as it proved it could stand up to the challenge of the weather conditions that it was exposed to, where other more expensive tents on the site failed!
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By: Quinny199 Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 05/09/2009
Bought one of these from Go Outdoors for a trip to Belgium for the F1 Grand Prix. I was going to buy a Vango tent, but having seen this on display I decided to give it a go.
For the money it's an excellent tent in my view. There were 3 adults sleeping in it with air beds and it was fine, but any more would have been uncomfortable. It has some nice features like curtains over the perspex panels, dayglo guy lines, a small zip to run power into the sleeping area if required and all the doors have elastic and toggles to keep them out of the way.
I had a go at putting the flysheet up at home before we went and had problems getting the pins into the poles as others have mentioned. I found if you fit the front pins first and the rears after they go in much more easily. I also found the inner sleeping compartment zips to be very tight at first, but a bit of adjustment of the guy ropes made it acceptable.
We were on slightly uneven ground and it's easy to peg the tent out off-square because there in no strapping between the front and rear as I've had on other tents in the past. This is what can lead to the front of the flysheet being slack and potentially collecting water. I found if you peg the front first there is helps keep everything square and the flysheet at the correct tension.
I'll certainly be using it again and having pitched it a couple of times now I'm sure it'll be easy to get it perfect next time.
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By: Brick_driver Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 03/09/2009
I decided to have a go at camping due to my interest in Track days. This tent was on offer at gooutdoors.Co.Uk and had a higher (Double in some cases) hydrostatic head than these tents you see in Argos or Halfords. So for £59.99 it seemed a bargain for first time campers.
The first time we set it up it took us about 45 minutes following the poor instructions on the inside of the carry bag. My only niggle, and this seems to be a common one, is that it is difficult to locate the ring and pin system. It takes one of you to push down on the pole and another person to try and guide the pin in. Once up though it is a nice a spacious tent and has more than enough space for two adults and all the gear.
The second time we put it up it took less than 20 minutes and we put it up in less than favourable conditions. This is where the advantage of a 'fly first pitch' came to light. We managed to pitch the fly sheet first which stopped the inside from becoming wet.
For some reason we ended up booking a pitch on one of the wettest days of the year (Wed 26th August) where it rained near enough all day and night. There was quite a strong wind blowing too. Because of the 3000mm hydrostatic head we stayed completely dry with the condensation on the fly sheet being the only moisture visible. The reason why the ring and pin was so taught become obvious in the wind.
There was plenty of storage in the porch area of the tent and with the front door rolled up if provided a little bit of shelter for cooking. I wouldn't bother making a canopy out of the front door as there needs to be zero wind.
The living area is again nice a spacious for up to 4 adults and comes with a central divider to make two 'bedrooms'. Though with only the two of us using it there was more than enough space. Especially if your other half likes to take half her wardrobe! I did like the little storage pouches dotted around the living are to.
Taking the tent down was also easy enough. Though remembering how it actually rolled up is a challenge. It's also not very funny rolling it up in the wet. But I guess thats one of the joys of camping in the UK.
The quality is certainly there as these tents are made by Gelert. Even though my local camping store tried to tell me that Hi Gear are Gelert cast offs.
Recommended for the first time camper!
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By: M1TCH Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 01/09/2009
I bought this tent from go outdoors for £59.99 in June this year to take north Yorkshire for the weekend.
What a fantastic tent, really quick to put up and very spacious inside the only very slight problem I encountered was the poles were very tight to get in the pin system but once they were in and guy ropes in the tent was very solid and comfy.
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By: Slashnburn Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 23/08/2009
Bought from Go Outdoors for £69.99, delivered Friday 21st august 2009. Itching to try out the tent, I set off. After getting lost I arrived at campsite in Anglesey in the early hours of sat 22nd 1.30 am.
Inexperienced I guess, but took me an hour to pitch, single handed, in the dark, using only a fluorescent lantern in a light breeze, (also being very quiet to prevent disturbing the neighbours)
The tent shone, loads of room, with lots of little features.
I particularly liked the way you could peg down the flaps around the bottom of the living area, effectively making it a fully SIG, or unpeg them for ventilation.(although they do flap about a lot if unpegged) The weather on the Saturday was glorious, and with the front door extended as a canopy I could have been in no better place, lots of room, and well made.
Saturday night/sunday mornings weather however, was a different ball game. I had camped in an extremely exposed location, and suffered with gusts of up to 50 - 60 mph, and driving rain.
The 2 main crossed poles over the bedroom area stood up to the weather, with what I consider to be an acceptable amount of flexibility, but the single pole over the porch flexed inwards rather dramatically, probably because I had the front door facing 45 degrees into the wind, better positioning would have been the order of the day (Inexperience showing there again)
I tried guying the porch pole directly ahead to prevent the pole flexing inwards, and it flexed sideways instead. (due to the 45 degree angle of the wind)
However, despite the strong winds driving the rain against the front door for 14 hours solid, it never leaked, nothing broke and with the flaps around the living area pegged to the ground around the groundsheet, was draught free
Now for the niggles.
The Inner tent/bedroom attachment elastics were far too tight, making it extremely difficult to zip up the bedroom door, without putting massive strain on the zip, and that panel looked stretched and uncomfortable.
The strap that runs across the bottom of the side door was about 1' - 2' too long, which made zipping up the side door impossible (again without putting strain on the zip) unless you actually moved the bottom of the pole closer to the main body of the tent.
The flaps around the bottom of the living area do flap about if unsecured
So here`s what I`m going to do.
1. Sew longer and stronger elastics in to secure the inner tent to the outer poles, (especially the lower 2 on both sides) this will allow me to zip the bedroom door up without straining the zip, but still keep things nicely tensioned
2. Going to put 2 extra guy ropes on the front living area pole so it can be supported in both directions (front to back, and side to side)
3. Shorten the strap under the side door, to make it a perfect fit
4. Sew in some small vecro patches to secure the flaps around the living area upwards to give good ventilation, without the flappage.
These are things that should already be done, but for 70 quid, for a 5 man tent, with 3000mm HH I really can`t grumble, and with my little modifications, should make it superb.
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By: Olidais Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2008 Rating: Date: 22/08/2009
I bought this tent because I take my three small children camping on my own and I wanted us all in one bedroom. The tent is really easy to put up, three poles and pegging out and the job is done. Had a but of trouble tensioning the window flaps at the front but with a bit of adjustment to the guy lines managed to get them reasonably tight. Stood up to lashings of driving rain and everything was bone dry inside. The bedroom has plenty of room for airbeds, small suitcase and we even had a collapsible wash basket in the corner. We had our cooker and shelves in the porch area which was not massive but certainly adequate for our needs. One night was a bit chilly and we had 4 adults all on deckchairs comfortably sat in the porch with the doors closed. I love this tent as it is just the job for 3/4/5 night stays for a family.
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By: Elmo4gonzo Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 20/08/2009
Initially this tent seemed very nice BUT.
On our second use of this tent we had a rather windy night. We have camped with several different tents before and know we had assembled the tent correctly, but it was completely unstable in it's design. The whole tent collapsed sideways in the wind putting so much pressure on the tent itself that the poles snapped in multiple places and the inner tent was ripped in several spots.
We had to dismantle it in quite a hurry and go home first thing in the morning, cutting our holiday short with all our stuff completely soaked.
This was not an extreme wind that the tent was in - there was at least a hundred other tents in the field of different sizes and makes. And they were all just fine.
Do not buy this tent unless you are sure there will be no wind at all while you are away.
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By: Zannie x Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 16/08/2009
I have just returned from a camping trip with my two grandchildren aged 12 and 6, I chose the Atakama 5 because the pitching time said 10 mins. Being a 54 year old grandmother and knowing I had to have a large enough tent for the grandchildren, and would probably have to pitch the tent myself, the Atakama was my choice. I found the tent easy to pitch, my grandchildren helped by steadying the opposite poles as the tent rose and helped with the pegging round, my 6 yr old grandson took great delight in using the mallet to hammer the pegs home. (I had purchased a large peg extractor so this wasn't a problem). I had also used 2 extra groundsheets under the tent before pitching and the tent was fully erected and pegged out in 25 minutes total time, which I thought was pretty impressive.
I thought the bedroom inner tent area was too large and the living space too small, so I adapted this by only using the top two toggles of the inner tent and tucking the bottom area under from the centre position and this worked really well giving us an extra 2 ft of living room space and enough room for our table and chairs (suitcase type with seats attached). Doing this meant that the attached groundsheet was going to be short over the living area but this didn't matter as I had already pegged out 2 large groundsheets under this area before pitching the tent. Also I thought even if we had used the other 2ft of bedroom space this tent would not have been big enough for 5 people. I would recommend 4 maximum, especially if you use airbeds which take up more ground space. For 3 of us this was a great sized tent.
We didn't use the side door as I had my tent cupboard / tidy placed at the opposite side in front of the side door, so we just used the front porch area. I staked out a 'garden' area with the use of 2 sets of wind breaks either side of the porch (the low ones, so not to block us in) and I used this area for the two ring cooking stove which is on legs, and an extra camping table for meal preperation. I felt that we could have done with a fly sheet over this area as when it rained I had to cover the kitchen/cooking area over as there was not enough room in the living space of the tent.
Also the bedroom inner tent area had enough height to stand, but the living area space was not high enough and I had to bend my head in this area and also under the front porch area, and I am only 5ft 4in tall so another couple of inches would have been perfect.
All in all with a couple of adaptations this made a great tent, very easy for 1 person to erect, but I will be buying an annex/flysheet to cover the front cooking area before my next trip.
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By: Clairey224 Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2009 Rating: Date: 12/08/2009
As a novice camper this tent was pretty easy and straightforward to put up but I have to agree with the other review the ring and pin is a very tight fit.
We bought it because we wanted extra height and it's so nice to get dressed standing up without hunching over like in other tents. We stored all our food, gas burners, fold up chairs etc in the front porch and it didn't feel cramped at all a really good space.
Overall a great tent with a lovely spacious feel, 2 more weeks and i'll be trying it out again, can't wait.
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49 User Reviews of the Atakama 5 - Showing 31 to 40 Page:
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With large living /storage and sleeping areas, the Atakama 5 is ideal for families having a long weekend away, or any groups of campers who may need space to store gear and spread around.
It is a double skin tent, with the outer pitched first to keep things simple, and a breathable inner to keep you comfortable.
The outer flysheet is 190T PU coated polyester with taped seams and a hydrostatic head of 3000, meaning it's rugged enough to handle scrapes and waterproof enough to take the heaviest downpours.
For warmer conditions, the breathable inner and large side and front doors will make sure the inside is ventilated enough so you and your kit are not overheating. The front door can be extended out as a canopy using the steel porch poles, offering shelter from sun or showers.
The porch/living area has a pre-attached groundsheet, making it easy for you to keep a clear, clean space for furniture, bikes etc., and keeping the bedroom area draught-free.
For extra stability, the tent has pre-attached double guylines, so it will easily withstand any strong gusts of wind. The guylines themselves are bright and reflective, to help you to find the tent in the dark, and to stop other campers from tripping over them if you're in a busy campsite.
Other useful features include slick pole sleeves to aid pitching, fire-retardant fabrics, and large windows to allow maximum light in if you need it.
A simple, yet versatile tent for easy group camping.
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