REI quarter dome air

[Cropguy]

Hello to everyone I’m new to the hammock camping world and to hammock forum as well. Since joining several have asked about the REI quarter dome air. So here’s a quick overview. I recently purchased 2 of these and the matching under quilt for scout camp out. Materials are excellent quality and cross pattern stitching was great to reinforce stress points. Bug net is great and while deployed and acts as head test while sitting in hammock. Easy set up once figured out the Whoopi sling, hammock and quilt up in less than 15 min. Tried them out in back yard first with the following set up . Hammock plus under quilt plus exped twintrack pad inserted into big Agnes buffalo park 40 degree sleeping bag paired w 15 degree sleeping bag used as top quilt. Temps down to upper 20’s completely toasty warm no cold spots. At camp out set up posed a small problem as trees were larger in diameter than anticipated but still was able to set up in under 30 min. Same set up with pad and bags and under quilt. Temps dropped to 20 degees again completely comfortable. As for sleeping it was one the best nights sleep I’ve had on camping trip in a long while. No hard ground no pressure points that caused discomfort and easily slept on my side all night with no shoulder squeeze. So overall a great sleep system the only draw back is finding the right size tree to work w the hammock suspension system. In the future I ma purchase a set of atlas straps to avoid the tree diameter issue. Have not used in rain as of yet so the rain fly size I cannot comment on. I will say the the rain fly set up was a breeze no knots to tie and built in draw strings worked great. I’m sure there are better bridge hammocks out there but for a novice it’s works well and at a reasonable price.

[QFT]

Cool! Personally I recommend another option other than atlas straps, but only because they're heavy (I still use my Atlas Straps for car camping). Check out the suspension systems at Dutchwaregear. It'll cost about the same as atlas straps at less than half the weight, longer reach, and you can choose sliding buckles or something easy like that if you want.

[cougarmeat]

I like the Atlas straps - or Python straps by (also carried by REI). Though the adjustment is step-wise (loop to loop) instead of continuous (like a slider on webbing), I think you can get close enough. It's easy to add a loop of Amsteel (you will learn how to make these) for something like a half-step if you want. I have tried all the usual suspension and settled on the daisy chain for quick, simple, foolproof setup. Whoopie slings required too much extra distance and I didn't want to deal with milking the bury in wet frozen weather.

Because you mentioned the size of trees, I'm guessing you are considering the XL Atlas straps. They are a little heavy but you are hiking for exercise, right

A lighter solution is Dutchware Spider or woven straps. They provide the convenience of the daisy chain but much lighter than Atlas or Python. It can be a little difficult to fit your connector (carabiner) in the loop while the loop is under tension. So I'd put the carabiner in the loop first, then connect the hammock to the carabiner.

One downside to the XL Atlas is, instead of just making it longer and adding more loops, they just made the "tail" - the part that goes around the tree longer. The problem is, when you have a small tree, you either have to wrap the tail around twice (or more) which makes it difficult to adjust if you need to move it up/down a little, or you have to wrap with the loop end and hope you have enough loops left over to reach the hammock.

You can order Dutch's straps in any length so you can do a little math (maybe bring up the hammock calculator website) to get a max length. Figure the biggest diameter tree you want to deal with and how far up the tree you want to reach. How far up the tree you want to reach will give you a maximum distance apart for your hammock size. The hammock calculator will give you the suspension length to the tree. then you can calculate the length needed to go around your max diameter and add the two the get your max suspension length.

Note that if you buy a "set", the straps are usually only 9 or 10 ft long. There's not much left if you are wrapping around a Ponderosa Pine in the PNW.