Last week we spent a couple of nights at Shortlake Farm, near Weymouth. The campsite is very exposed (it's on a hill and is the highest point looking west, which is where the wind was coming from) and the MetOffice reported gusts in excess of 40mph whilst we were there. That said we pitched in a slightly lower field behind a hedge for some protection and it was noticeably less windy where we were than in the higher field..
We have a HiGear Voyager Elite 6 tent (exclusive to GoOutdoors) which is a dome tent and when we got it the sales rep told us being a dome it would stand up to wind better than a tunnel. It didn't....
To be fair it didn't break, but oh how it shook. Violently. The tunnel tents in the same field were showing a little flapping here and there but nowhere near as much shaking as ours.
Interestingly, I saw an identical tent at the nearby Eweleaze Farm campsite. It is more sheltered there than where we were (they are lower down the hill) but that tent also was shaking in a similar way to ours when again the tunnels were barely showing a flap.
I'm perpared to believe there was something wrong with how it was pitched, but I was very careful to stretch out the base and guy it as tightly as I could. I couldn't see anything wrong with the pitching at all.
Has anyone else come across this type of issue or got any advice on how to stop it happening if we encounter wind again ?
Just a quick point - I know it is a cheap(ish) poly tent with glass fibre poles, but so were many of the tunnels which showed nowhere near the same amount of flexing as our tent. Also, I know the tent was largely side-on to the wind, but again so were the tunnels. Is this just a sign of a really poorly designed tent or is flexing/shaking like this a feature of domes ?
See video below (sorry it's a bit rubbish, video is not my thing)
I concede that I've next to no knowledge of this, or similar tents, but from the video, I'm tempted to say you seem to have done as well as you can, as far as pitching is concerned.
They do say follow the seam, where guys are concerned, but not sure that can be the case with tents like yours. If those front guys went out to the side, then there would be no guys to the front, so if anything, I'd advise to get more guylines, and add them in these conditions in the future. Add them to the existing attachment points, (so you have two guys coming from the same point(s), but shoot them off at different angles/spread them out.
The base appears to be a good shape, and it appears that your guys are tight enough when the gusts stop. It appears it's merely the frame being blown about, so additional guys is all I can think of.
Maybe someone who is familiar with these tents will come up with some better advice?
I'm tempted to say well done for doing the best you could under the circumstances, and managing to keep it up and undamaged.
If you were a cub scout, I think you'd get a badge for that!
Thanks for that Mucker. We got lucky that there was a pitch available on the sheltered side of the hedge, and more so that a very kind lady came and offered us friendly advice to move when we first tried to pitch on the other side !! She'd been pitched the windy side throughout the week but moved after a rough night before, and then we turned up and were trying to pitch in exactly the spot where she'd been... Tent would have been destroyed I'm sure of it.
It's an interesting point about the guys. As supplied the tent has some single guy lines which attach at two places. I'm not convinced that's optimal and was planning to get extra lines to have one for each attachment point. I like your idea of going even further though and having an extra line for each point too. Time to get some carabiners and extra lines !!
As an aside, I now realise because of the shape of the tent the guy lines attach relatively low down, leaving a lot of height and therefore windage above the point where the guys attach. I don't think there is much I can do about that though :(
I am still interested to know anyone elses experience or thoughts with this issue though.
Just back from camping holidays down Wales, everything was ok and really loved this tent.....until stronger winds arrived (over 25mph).
This tent shouldn't be on the market at all, or should highlight that IT IS USELESS IN WINDY WEATHER
I have some pictures and videos and I plan to make anti commercial about it.
That what you present on your video wasn't that bad (however this class tent should handle winds below 50mph), our tent started to bend down with about 30-35mph, it was terrible night. I will have to apologize my old smaller tent from Decathlon
it was noisy even with small winds but never let me down at higher winds.
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Staxu, are you saying your Decathlon (Quechua) tent was rubbish in windy conditions or that you also have a HiGear Voyager Elite 6, the same as the OP? Sorry, I'm just not clear on which one you mean.
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Topic: HiGear Voyager Elite 6 - Wind Problems !!
