Sorry I missed this so long. They are too short to do it in the manner of half a Tensa4, where the hammocker’s center of gravity is kept on the outside of the virtual baseline to avoid the need for a strong guyline. You could, in principle, rig up two Solos as a bipod and use a single guyline, in the manner of a Byer of Maine Madera or YOBO Freedom stand.
However, I see no benefit to doing it this way from a cost, weight, or reliability point of view. Anchors pulling out in varying ground conditions is the main point of failure of all mono or bipod stands, so having 2 anchors nearly halves the risk of problems. Sure, you can use 2 anchors with a bipod, but since only 3 ground points are required for stability (one foot and two anchors, or two feet and one anchor), the redundancy of 4 loses in a weight/cost/bulk analysis.
Also, bipods don’t work as well across slopes, because unless the feet are level or the poles adjustable in length enough to center the hammock connection, the downslope pole will bear most or even all of the load. If the pole is strong enough for that, then it might as well be a cheaper, lighter, simpler monopod.
Finally, while a monopod requires 2 anchors, if one of those anchors is strong enough to bear the whole hammock load (say you can tie to a concrete picnic table or vehicle bumper, or the ground is just really firm — situations where a single anchor with bipod would be fine), then the second anchor can be really weak: just strong enough to keep the pole from falling over when the hammock is empty. You could literally tie the second to a 6-pack if it wasn’t too windy. That’s because you can move a monopod’s foot to distribute the load across its anchors any which way, as discussed here:
https://youtu.be/AIo6XWYKG5Q
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Bookmarks