Fast-Up” Set-Up
What It Is And How To Do It
Note: This article is an
adaptation of the handout I used for a class on the subject at the SCA’s West
Kingdom Arts & Sciences Tourney. It also includes a few paragraphs from
other items on this web site, because they relate to the subject matter here. So
if parts of this article seem familiar to you, that’s why.
I have often watched people setting up big tents in strong winds (and done it
myself more times than I care to count). As I watched one person (or two or
three) on the team struggling to keep a pole upright with many square yards of
fabric fighting them, while another person (or two or three) tries to get the
guy ropes set and the stakes driven, I thought “There has to be a better way.”
The method I describe, which I call “fast-up” tent pitching, may well be that
way for you. By “fast-up,” I don’t necessarily mean that you tent will go up
faster than it would have if pitched any other way (although it very well
might), but that the interval from the time it is lying on the ground until the
moment that it’s up and guyed has been reduced to its absolute minimum. This is
important, especially in windy conditions, because this interval is the time
when the tent is most susceptible to damage and is hardest to control.
To use this method, you must first find some way to attach the ropes to the
canopy of the pavilion. In most Dragonwing pavilions (but not their sunshades),
the ropes are attached to the canopy or some rigid part of the frame via
eye-pins, so this step is automatic. For rectangular or square tents made by
Panther Primitives, Tentmasters, or Tentsmiths (hereinafter referred to
generically as PantherMasterSmiths, or PMS), and for the “BC” style sunshades,
the ropes may be affixed to the canopy via retainers on the spikes of the side
poles. These retainers are made from a fender washer sized to fit loosely over
the spike, and piece of tubing or hose of a size to fit snugly on the spike, as
shown on the left side of the first illustration. These retainers may be removed
once the tent is up, or they may be left in place. If you want an even more
secure, but less aesthetic, arrangement, you can substitute the iron rod stock
in the pole with threaded rod stock, and the tubing with an appropriately sized
wing nut, as shown on the right.
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| Figure 1: The rope retainer arrangement |
(This set-up method doesn’t work very well with the PMS “marquee” style of
tent because the canopies of this style are too prone to distort when laid on
the ground, thus making it difficult to tell from the spread-out tent exactly
where the side poles will end up positioning themselves. These marquees are
usually set up by first raising the center poles via the tent’s “wind lines.”
But using a variation of the “fast-up” method, the stakes for securing the wind
lines can be accurately placed ahead of time so that the center-poles, once
raised, will be securely guyed.)
The ropes must also be marked in some way to indicate the distance from the
pole that the stake will be driven in. This distance should be at least four
feet for a six- or seven-foot pole. I tie a knot in the rope at the desired
distance, so I always know where the stake is supposed to be. To locate where
this knot is to be, spread out the tent in the normal way, making sure that the
outline of the tent is accurately maintained That is, it should be as square as
possible, like it is when it’s set up. If it’s a round pavilion, make sure that
the top describes a circle and not an oval. Put the side poles into their
grommets around the top, but don’t lift up on them yet. Put the ropes onto the
studs in the side pole and put on the retainers to keep them there. On each
rope, measure out 4′ (48″) from the top of the pole and tie a knot there. If the
tent is a very large one, with higher walls than 7′, or if it’s a large “BC”
type sunshade, you might want to measure out 5′ or even more. Now you’re done
with the prep work.
If your round tent is stayed by ropes coming off their attachment points on a
diagonal (as the Dragonwing rounds do, because it’s far more stable an
arrangement), you need a slightly different method. Lay the ring out on the
ground and measure out 4′ from the ring; that’s where the stake goes. Now
stretch out the two ropes that go to each stake and arrange them to cross at the
point where the stake is. Tie your guide knots there. (See figure two; the knots
here are easy to locate because that’s also where the rope flags are.) You
needn’t use the canopy fabric itself at this point, although I used it in the
picture because the ring would have been damn hard to see without it.
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Figure 2: Locating the knots on a diagonally-guyed round
pavilion |
To set up the tent, first lay it on the ground exactly where it is to be
pitched. If the tent is rectangular, make sure that all the eaves are straight
lines. If it is a “BC” type of sunshade, you only need to be concerned with the
area defined by the pole grommets, not the parts that will become the sides
(that is, the area between the side poles at the top and the ground at the
bottom).
When the canopy is entirely spread out and positioned correctly, put the
spikes on the side poles, put the rope on top of the spike, and put on the
washer-and-hose (or wingnut) combination to keep the ropes on the spikes. Extend
the rope outward and drive a stake into the ground where your guide knot is on
your rope. Slip the “ground” end of the rope onto the stake. Adjust the rope so
that it will be only a little slacker than its tensioned length when the tent is
up. If you don’t know what this length is, adjust it temporarily to about eight
feet. Later, this dimension can also be indexed for future setups. DO NOT lift
up the side pole at this time!
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| Figure 3: Positioning the stakes via the knots |
Go around the tent completely until all the stakes, poles, and ropes are in
place. When everything is ready, go to the windward side of the tent and start
raising poles to their upright position. When all the poles are up on the
windward side, install the center pole or poles. Then install all the rest of
the side poles. Note that as you raise poles, everything will already be braced,
and nothing is going to go anywhere a much safer and more reliable way than
having somebody try to hold the pole vertical while somebody else pounds in a
stake and rope to secure it.
If your tent is a round pavilion with a ring, you have no side poles to lift.
You just need to raise the center pole. If you first lift the ring on the
windward side, the wind will help you lift the canopy-and-ring assembly. With a
little practice, you can go from flat-on-the-ground to raised-and-secured in
about five seconds or less.
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| Figure 4: The round pavilion raised |
Once canopy is raised, the ropes can be re-adjusted for minimum canopy
wrinkles and best overall shape. The sides of the tent may then be hung in the
usual way.
High-wind camping
Most high-wind failures of tents are due to
either stakes that were too small for the load, or stakes that were pounded in
too close to the tent wall. Dragonwing provides sixteen-inch stakes for most of
the ropes in our tents that get serious loads in winds, and they suffice in all
but the windiest weather, or in all but the loosest soil. But if you have an
abundance of either condition, or a combination of the two, or shorter stakes,
or another type of tent, here are some things you can do to keep yourself
connected to terra firma. These instructions were written with the Dragonwing
tents in mind, but should work well with the PMS tents and most home-built large
tents.
- Use longer stakes. Many people have pieces of re-bar, 18″ or more. My usual
preference is to drive a piece of 1″ x 2″ furring lumber (at least a foot long
or so) into the ground, with the wide side facing the tent, and then drive in
the tent stake immediately behind it (that is, against the side of the slat that
isn’t facing the tent), so that the tent ropes pull the stake tight against the
slat. This works because it’s not so much the depth of the stake that counts,
but the area of stake that presents itself to the dirt. The slat effectively
triples the size of the stake.
- Use more stakes. Tie additional lengths of rope to each of the rope pins (or
loops, or spikes, or however your ropes fasten to your tent) and run them out to
their own stakes. Don’t get them too close to the other stakes.
- Increase your footprint. Extend the ropes beyond their usual distance from
the tent. The only trouble with this method is that it creates more of a
tripping hazard, so make sure the ropes are well flagged.
- Use wind lines. These are special ropes that are attached to the center-pole
spikes after the spikes go though the canopy, but before the center poles are
raised. They extend out from the tent and then are staked down as far away from
the tent as practicable. The idea is to stabilize the tops of the center poles
and thereby prevent sway. Obviously, this method isn’t something you can easily
employ once the tent is erected, particularly if you have to partially dismantle
the tent in a freshening storm. So you need to keep track of the weather
forecasts, and have the ropes in place when you set up if it looks like it’s
going to be windy. Most of the manufacturers of larger tents use them routinely.
On the other hand, Dragonwing pavilions have been through most of the
horror-story windstorms you’ve heard about (the famous “Estrella hurricane” of a
few years back, the Twenty Five Year Celebration, the Thirty Year Celebration,
and innumerable foul-weather Pennsics and tourneys) without needing wind lines
at all. My library of pavilion representations shows a few of the very largest
pavilions using wind lines, which may have been because they were also used for
setting up the tents as well. (Of course, other artists may simply have
neglected to draw them because they seemed superfluous to the scene at hand.)
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A painting by Simone Martini, dated 1328, showing the use of wind lines on
the large round and oval tents. |
Rope Adjustments
Ropes need to be properly tensioned and
adjusted to work well. The simplest adjuster is a slip knot. It’s not too
difficult to tie. Here’s how:
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| Figure 5: The slip knot |
Slip-knots work very well
on most synthetic ropes, but not as well on natural ropes such as sisal, or
manila. On these ropes, it’s easier to use a rope slide. Here’s a diagram of the
kind of slide that Dragonwing uses on its tents:
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| Figure 6: Dragonwing’s rope slider |
The length is
really not critical; the greater the length, the more leverage you can put on
them but the more slack they put into the rope when released. Our sliders are
made from 1″ x 2″ (actually 1 1/2″ by 3/4″) red oak, available at most large
lumber centers. Don’t use plywood or softwood. The holes are 1/8″ larger than
the diameter of your rope. Note that the holes are drilled at an angle. The
slider should be threaded so that the holes are parallel to the rope when the
rope is slack. This increases the “bite” on the rope when the slider is
tightened. Be sure to “chamfer” or bevel the edges of the hole so they won’t eat
into the rope.
Other articles you
can read, mostly on tentmaking and medieval tents
: well… let’s do the same for the mental ray users then right?
so don’t go that way ok? i’m sure all of the diff. solutions out their can do wonderfull stuff, and are very fast, so this is just a small test/proof that Mental Ray CAN be compared with the rest of them.
This is a totally custom setup. It wasn’t really that
I started by cutting the mounting flange off the 2.2
and turbo assembly glows a dull red and have not had any
I “T”ed off both heater hoses to supply and return coolant to the
As for the turbo’s pressure
