TL;DR Ten out of ten! But it is specialized
I’ll add photos and thoughts once I get some time in the field, for now here’s what I just posted on Dutch’s site:
”This deserves reviews! My initial impressions are great, what a clever tarp design!
Make no mistake that this is a minimalist tarp, you need to be comfortable with dialing in setup and maybe even middle of night adjustment as conditions warrant. It is like a trimmed down hex tarp, with a little bit pointier angles at the ridge line connections and strong cat cuts on the sides.
In exchange you get great quality construction, 4.5 oz on my kitchen scale with generous stuff sack, better weather coverage than a traditional parallelogram asymmetric tarp, and a great price for a dyneema tarp. I may use the stuff sack as a ditty bag for electronics in my backpack, sort of a two-fer. I look forward to spending time in the field with some weather, and plan to come back with further impressions and photos.
You also get a good go-to-ground wonky half pyramid option in addition to the usual A frame setup people use with hex tarps (which I’ll come back with photos to explain).”
A couple of additional comments, I’m a novice hanger but an experienced ground dweller in the woods, and skimpy tarps are all I’ve used for decades. So another skimpy tarp doesn’t intimidate me, but since I want to do more hiking out west, good go to ground options are important. I typically like half pyramid setups better than A frames on the ground, to block wind better. Playing with paper I convinced myself that hex tarps can become a wonky half pyramid, so long as the ridge line is not cat cut. At least, I haven’t figured out how to make hex with a cat ridge line work. At any rate, I’ve verified that the Falcon can be set up in the ground as I’ve envisioned, really with better coverage than I’ve used on the ground in decades. I’ll get photos to illustrate it.
What else? All six line connections are 1/2” beasties D rings in grosgrain loops. I’ll start with a continuous ridge line with prusik knots or similar to allow adjustment over the hammock. You won’t get much privacy with this tarp, so if that’s a requirement look elsewhere. At some point I plan to tie back diagonally opposite side tie outs so that its coverage will be identical to the Dutch dyneema asym, just for comparison sake.
If anyone has questions, fire away. I plan to get to the Uhwarries with it a couple of times this winter (details still being worked out) if anyone in the NC area wants to see it in the wild.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks