I recently bought my first hammock-specific tarp, Warbonnet Big Mamjamba. I've been using a heavy duty home depot tarp, and wanted a lighter-weight and "more legit" setup. I'm sort of a geek for new gear, so the idea of moving from a ~3 lbs. plastic tarp to a 13.5 oz. silnylon tarp was exciting. I haven't taken it out on any trips yet, just set it up a few times at the local park, and here's my first impressions:
Shipping was fast. Their website says tarps can take 3-4 weeks from order date to ship. I ordered mine on 10/25, it shipped on 10/31, and I received it on 11/2 (just over 1 week total).
The ridgeline likes to be tight! I just to switched Derek Hansen's method since getting this tarp. After tightening down the guylines, the ridgeline seam would "droop" quite a bit (from being pulled down by the guylines). I cinched the ridgeline down a little more and it came back up, restoring the head room.
Today I experimented with hanging it from 1 tree and 1 hiking pole, just for fun's sake (more of ground-based backpacking setup). Don't judge me, it was more for fun than anything else, as most of the places I go have plenty of trees, thankfully.
Everything pitched pretty tight. The tarp is so light though, that it felt as if the sides would be pushed in quite a bit from even a medium wind. It makes sense, the sides of this tarp are big! (which is why I bought it) For this reason, I started experimenting with the panel pulls (these were one of the reasons I chose the Mamajamba over the Hennesy Hex 30D).
First I tried 1 hiking pole for both the panel poles on 1 side of the tarp. Lengths of 1/8" shock cord were girth hitched to the panel pulls, then looped over the end of the hiking pole. Then I guyed the pole out with a separate length of 2mm reflective cord.
This was ok, but pulling the panel pulls together towards the center of the tarp created slack in the side panel of the tarp in between the panel pulls (see the wrinkles in the photo below).
Since the idea behind panel pulls is that they keep the windward panel pulled out, I figured I'd normally have 2 hiking poles to use on the windward side. So I tried 1 hiking pole dedicated to 1 panel pole, and it worked much better, as I was able to pull perpendicular to the side panel, instead of back towards the center of it (no picture unfortunately).
Then I was interested in the over-the-top of the ridgeline hiking pole pull-outs.
This worked better than I thought, and didn't seem to lower the headroom inside (by weighing down the ridgeline).
Btw, I'm using the STL's from this thread and they are great.
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Originally Posted by Brancher
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