 | Home > Camping, Caravanning and Holidays > Rooftent in a storm? |
 
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| DaftOldGit Member Since: 20 Sep 2015 Location: London Posts: 52  
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I tried my new rooftent for the first time last night in The Cairngorms.
It was my first time in rooftent and Mrs first time camping at all! It was blowing a wind, but by no means a storm. It was so noisy inside that we couldn't hear each other speak and Mrs was worried that we'd blow over. It did feel like we were on a North Sea trawler. I tied down the ladder and added some rocks to stop the whole thing folding closed on us. It's made me wonder if it's really an all-season camping solution. The tent is a ARB Simpson 3. Has anyone had really bad experiences or does just feel worse than it is? |
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31st Dec 2016 9:46am |
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| davew Member Since: 02 Jan 2012 Location: North Yorkshire Posts: 888  
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I've had some experience of our Howling Moon RTT in gale force winds on the coast and learnt a few valuable lessons. I have a feeling that the ARB isn't heavy canvas ? If that's the case then it may be worse than the HM.
We did a trip around the south west coast in "summer" in our RTT one year and had storm force winds nearly every night. The first night was horrible and we packed the tent up at 4am and went and parked up in a sheltered area and tried to sleep in the cab. Once we'd figured out that the tent wasn't actually pulling itself apart and it just sounded a LOT worse than it actually was the following nights weren't too bad. The downstairs room on the HM that we have is the lightweight one rather than the heavy canvas one and the majority of the noise comes from that rather than the tent and fly sheet. It sounds like it's about to rip itself apart although in reality it was fine, just sounded really bad which isn't good for sleeping ! We tend not to have the bottom room up if we know it's going to be very windy. The one thing that makes a huge difference is the direction you park your vehicle in, relative to the wind. We found that parking the Defender with the front facing the prevailing wind made life much more comfortable both in reducing noise and rocking from gusts. Whenever we set up, if we know that it's likely to be windy, I always park up based on the prevailing wind. The one time we got caught out badly was when we set up on a perfectly calm day and, as it turned out, we were sideways on to the gale that arrived at 1 am. It felt like the Defender was going to be pushed over with each gust seeming stronger than the last. If you don't have the bottom room on it's even worth getting up and changing the direction of the vehicle if the wind direction changes significantly. Either way, being in any tent in strong winds is never fun, I've had some pretty bad experiences in ground tents too, I once had a Kyham 2 man tent fold a pole on top of me on an exposed moor and spent the rest of the night trying to keep the tent off my head... I didn't get much sleep that night ! http://www.yorkshireoffroadclub.net/ |
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31st Dec 2016 11:49am |
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| BossHog Member Since: 28 Jun 2013 Location: Fylde Coast Posts: 185
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We had a similar experience this summer the weather was fine so we decided to hook up the globe master trailer fitted with a HM RTT and head out for the weekend. We setup at a camp site in the middle of a field right on the sea front, with the rear of the tent which is approx 4 metres high and flat facing the sea, which turned out to be facing the direction of the later storm.
Come late evening the wind got up from nowhere to storm force, campers were pulling down tents and leaving at all hours of the night, some just left everything and left anyway. I was in two minds to do the same, but was worried that if I started to release pegs and guide ropes that the canvas would destroy itself in the storm, the wind and whipping noises within our tent was horrendous, I have never heard anything like it and I really though it would all blow down. In the morning I was more than really surprised that all was still in one piece. None of the pegs had come loose and all had stayed in the ground, the guide ropes also all stayed taut and we had no damage to the canvas, the trailer also never rocked or moved an inch. The worst we encountered apart from a lack of sleep, as I and others on site, stayed up all night constantly checking pegs and ropes, was that the three extending poles at the rear of our tent had all bent under the force of the canvas wall set pushing against the poles. The camp site in the morning looked like a bomb site with wrecked tents and rubbish everywhere, granted ours is not an ARB set up, though the RTT's do seem to be able to take a bit of a beating regarding wind, though the noise from the wind whipping the canvas does rattle the nerves some what. The wind on this occasion was exceptionally bad though in reality it does tend to sound worse than it actually is, it was mentioned that the winds had gusted up to force 10... Though I'm no sailor. The plus is its given us a lot more confidence on the capabilities of the HM RTT setup, as I'm sure we will never be in conditions like that ever again (Hopefully) . |
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31st Dec 2016 6:41pm |
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| williamthedog Member Since: 29 Dec 2012 Location: south wales Posts: 3441 
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Haven't had a problem with mine, again a maggiolina.
Its the foxwing that rocks the defender as the wind catches the sides. They haven't been damaged but in the middle of the night it can be a bit off putting.  |
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31st Dec 2016 8:29pm |
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| John P Member Since: 26 Dec 2013 Location: West Sussex Posts: 312 
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Well........ the wife and I were camping with friends in Ringwood, the night storm Katie hit. If you look at a map you'll see that it's not that far inland from the Isle of Wight, and they measured 106 mph at the needles. Needless to say it was some night in our Hannibal Roof top tent. The wind sounded like a freight train coming through the forest. Our friends awning was ripped clean off their roof rack, actually ripping the bolts out of the roof rack. We ended up taking our foxwing down at that point. It was a long night, but we felt very safe in our roof top tent. But we spent a lot of time out side helping other folks batten down their roof top tents etc. I was so impressed with the tent I wrote a lengthy account of our experience and sent it to Hannibal in South Africa. They asked if they could publish in their local magazine, which I agreed to. Not sure if they ever did publish it.
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31st Dec 2016 9:01pm |
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| Chris86 Member Since: 15 Jul 2014 Location: South Yorks Posts: 788 
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We have had a couple of nights of really bad weather in our howling moon tourer 1.4, it was actually a rather cozy, comfy place to be once we had got the fly properly adjusted and the back end of the tent tensioned down properly (our experience was that you need to tighten the two rearmost ropes a lot more than you really think to get the tent to remain fully tight once two adults were in it!)
Chris |
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31st Dec 2016 9:22pm |
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| Hendrix Member Since: 04 Oct 2016 Location: North Notts Posts: 103 
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Couple of times in Africa we came against really strong winds in our Howling Moon. First time we were in an open camp site and the main problem was finding something solid enough to fasten the rear fold section guy ropes to. The pegs we had were not long enough to do anygood in the soft/sandy ground.
Second time the buffeting got so bad we dropped the tent and spent the night in the cab. We didint want any bent frames as we were in the middle of our trip and we couldnt sleep with that noise anyway. In general though with our tent opening over the back putting the wagon head to wind worked fine most times. |
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1st Jan 2017 7:05am |
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| DaftOldGit Member Since: 20 Sep 2015 Location: London Posts: 52
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Thanks for sharing your experiences.
My ARB doesn't have any guy ropes or even anything to attach any ropes to. Don't they have wind in Australia? Certainly in future, I'll check the wind direction and turn the motor to face upwind. I'll devise a way to secure the overhang, maybe guyropes or maybe make up poles from galvanised conduit to fix diagonally from the overhang down to the rear crossmember. That way, if I need to, I could reposition the motor whilst the tent is already up. |
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1st Jan 2017 8:22am |
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| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
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Many years ago in Morocco a friend of mine was nearly folded in half inside his Howling Moon roof tent whilst setting up in particularly stormy weather. He was lucky not to be injured. It certainly made us appreciate our ground tents pitched in the lea of the vehicles. Darren
110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
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1st Jan 2017 11:00am |
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| John P Member Since: 26 Dec 2013 Location: West Sussex Posts: 312
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Hmmm there seems to be a common denominator here..... HM
Our friends had a HM as well, and we had to help them secure their roof top tent, whereas our Hannibal was completely fine. |
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1st Jan 2017 11:19am |
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| Pam W Member Since: 25 Oct 2011 Location: North Yorkshire Posts: 1169 
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The majority above say their HMs kept them safe and the tents stayed in 1 piece ! How that reads that HMs are rubbish and Hannibals are better I can't see! 🤔🤔😉 Our blog - http://landytravels.com/
Yorkshire Off Road Club - http://www.yorkshireoffroadclub.net |
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1st Jan 2017 5:29pm |
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| Chris86 Member Since: 15 Jul 2014 Location: South Yorks Posts: 788
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I have used a ratchet strap to tension ours down before. As I said above, its all in getting it tensioned- once everything is tight and positioned ours doesn't flap at all. The standard pegs are a bit crap to get enough tension on- I have a couple of pegs made from 10mm bar that are about a foot long that do the trick! Incidentally- we have recently upgraded to a hard shell tent so our 1.4 will be up for sale shortly! Chris |
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1st Jan 2017 10:22pm |
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| Vogler Member Since: 02 Nov 2014 Location: Brussels Posts: 309  
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Wind was a reason for us to choose for a hardshell with tilted roof. Esthetics are not the reason why these defenders are parked in the same direction... First one is ours with a James Baroud, second a rental with an unbranded rtt,, the third an extec.
 Click image to enlarge J |
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1st Jan 2017 11:37pm |
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| Davidej Member Since: 30 Sep 2014 Location: Devon Posts: 266 
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Seeing the three 110s with different tents I would be interested to hear your views on the pros and cons of each of these RTTs. Deciding whether to go fold over type (Howling Moon, Hannibal etc) or clam shell/hard top version……...
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2nd Jan 2017 10:07am |
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