UPDATE:
I bought my Overland Track pass and Tas Parks pass! So I'm seriously committed now.
And I got a Lightheart Gear SoLong 6 on the clearance sale yesterday 4th July for US $175, and mine was a sample in a new sil-polyester fabric - with no imperfections. (The SoLong tents normally retail at $295. Their sale - started yesterday - is of Seconds and Samples, many with very little wrong with them, and most at $200.) The SoLong 6 is designed for 1 person but can fit 2 people - but you'd want that person to be an intimate friend or close family member. Otherwise better to go with the Duo tent.
SWITCH TO POLYESTER
This may be of interest to some of you - Judy (the owner of Lightheart Gear) tells me she is switching all tents from sil-nylon to sil-polyester over the next year. She's started with the Firefly tents. Next will come the Duo tents in a few months time. And then next year the SoLong 6 tents will be polyester. I believe she's going for a 20 Denier sil-poly.
Now I'm really a fan of this idea, coming from a design background.
NYLON vs POLYESTER
Sil-nylon isn't great in wet weather. It sags. You have to readjust the tension of your tent. The water adds weight to the tent, including packed up wet and put in your pack - you're carrying extra weight of that water. Mike Cecot-Scherer from The Tent Lab (of Deuce of Spades trowel, and Moonlight tents) says that nylon expands 3.5% when wet. On a 120 inch (305 cm) length tent, that's 4 inches (10.16 cm) that your tent has expanded by.
Sil-polyester doesn't expand when wet. (It absorbs only a few tenths of a percent water and doesn't seem to grow or shrink at all.) As it absorbs less water, it dries faster. Which means if you are packing up in the morning after rain overnight, your polyester tent will have less water and less weight, and will dry faster.
So the sample tent I bought at the sale is one of the first sil-polyester samples Judy made for the SoLong 6 tent, which won't be available in polyester until 2019. However it's a 30 Denier rather than the 20 Denier she'll run them in, which means it's slightly heavier, weighing 0.96 kg. However I think it should also be more durable, perform better in rain. I also opted for the carbon fibre awning pole which is another 22 grams, as I think it's a nice feature of the tent.
If my sister decides to come with me on the Overland Track, I can either squish us into the SoLong 6 on standard mats, or take the Sierra Designs Flash 2 FL and split the weight between us. And if I'm going by myself, I'll take the SoLong 6 to lighten my load by 880 grams differential weight.
If any of you are wanting to look at the sale items - there are some cheap hiking skirts etc, as well as "seconds" tents, the clearance sale is here:
https://lightheartgear.com/collections/clearance-saleI'm also a big fan of Tarptent brand of tents, and ZPacks if I had the money for a cuban fibre tent to really save maximum weight - but ZPacks tents are beyond my budget for the amount of use I would get out of it, as a city-dweller who only gets out so often for hikes.
Best,
Emma
(Images of tent are from Lightheart Gear - not my own. I will post photos of my Sale Sample 30D polyester SoLong 6 tent once it arrives in Australia)