Review on using Hilleberg Nallo GT without inner

[andrewa]

Decided on trying the "lighter weight" approach last weekend, using my H'berg without an inner on Bogong, and then down in the Valley the next day.

Without an inner the Nallo 2 GT fly covers a huge area. With a dedicated ground sheet covering the area, I reckon you could probably sleep 4 happily. However I had a smaller groundsheet. Some concern about pitching it on the infernal ant nests that seem active over spring up there!

It was a cold windless night, down to low digits. Plenty of condensation. No problems with warmth, as I slept in my normal winter configuration of down clothing and quilt. Probably noticed outside of quilt was damper in the morning than it would have been if I was using the inner tent.

Next night was down in the Mitta valley. Again, no wind, and some anxiety about ant nests. Slept well until 4 am when woken by thunder, lightening and heavy rain. Was sprayed with moisture for a while, and almost decided to get out and sleep in car. Concluded that moisture was just condensation from tent being hit off by heavy rain, and which would normally fall on the inner tent, and be absorbed there.

Conclusion for me was that I'd rather take the inner tent, although I'd also be very tempted to make a similar style tent of lighter weight. The Hilleberg tents are bombproof. As such, they are probably over designed if you were doing a DIY version.

If making my own version, I'd probably move the inner forwards in the GT design about 50cm, to improve interior room, and provide a small rear vestibule, and I'd use Cuban for the floor, and one of the very light down proof cloths for the inner, and less heavily engineered "attachments". I'm thinking this will be my next project.

A

[Watertank]

Wow that is some project to take on! I'd love to see the result. One other option for using the Nallo GT without the inner would be to take the outer just with the Nallo GT footprint - it would save a few hundred grams and give you total floor coverage

[andrewa]

Looks like it's already been done.

http://www.lightwave.uk.com/products/tents/vapor

Surprised that there's not more weight saving over the regular version..
A

[Franco]

If you compare the same shelter done in silnylon and Cuben you will find a difference of around 150g for a single and 200g for a double.
The reason why some Cuben shelters are so much lighter is because there isn't all that much fabric in use , either smaller or way off the ground at least on one side.
I used to refer to some early Cuben shelters as "umbrella tents" because with wind blown rain the offered the same protection an umbrella does in that situation.

[undercling-mike]

That Cuben Lightwave tent looks pretty impressively built for what it is although the weight savings don't really stack up with the materials used or cost IMO. Looks like they're using the standard inner from their silnylon tents with fairly heavy fabrics so they could no doubt save quite a bit of weight by making the inner with the lightest suitable fabrics and the poles are fairly heavy 9.7mm alloy poles so quite a bit of weight could be saved if they designed around carbon fiber poles.

If they got it down to around 1.4kg for a Nallo 2 GT or about 1kg for a Nallo 2 clone then I bet there'd be some willing to pay the price.

[andrewa]

Yes, that's the sort of weight I was thinking of...just looked at cuben price . A roll of 30m is about $1000 from Z packs - I reckon it'd need about 18-20m....plus Argon for inner plus poles...

I've been pleasantly surprised how robust my Z packs hexamid twin has been - would like something roomier for winter! And a bit more storm proof.