Drop + Dan Durston X-Mid 1P Tent Discussions | Drop

Free Standard Shipping in the US on orders over $99

Drop + Dan Durston X-Mid 1P Tent

Showing 1 of 675 conversations about:

Drop + Dan Durston X-Mid 1P Tent

Seanneves

Sep 11, 2020

Great tent love the simplicity of setup. Some comments: GOOD:

- I usually just leave the inner attached. Easy peazy setup. Freaky really.
- It does REALLY WELL in the wind and sheds snow well. Breathes incredibly well. I had it in a rain storm and staked a marshy area and I had negligible condensation.
- HUGE VESTIBULES. Maybe too huge?
- I can set up in 2 minutes and do it really fast in the rain and keep in the inner dry. That's a tough at.
- Dan, GREAT design and super innovative. Currently my favorite trekking pole shelter.

NOT GOOD:

- My Camp Sky Carbon poles made a hole in the tent at the apex. I'll probably just put some aquaseal on it or something (any recommendations Dan?). No leaking the the 200D black backing is still intact. This is now a very well known issue and should probably be addressed in a revision at some point.
- As I said, inner is tight. I' gladly give up some of the vestibule area, especially towards the head and foot, for more inner room. Sitting up rubs, shoulders are tight. Doesn't bother me really too bad but it's tight. I'm 5-11 and 190. Add hooks to hang a dry line and other accessories inside.

OTHER/MEH/NOTES:

- More of a note (my fault really): Rolling your doors doesn't work from the outside. It's really smart when you think of it. It's meant to be rolled from the inside. If you roll from the outside, the door will unwind and droop and the loop is hard to disconnect from the inside as well. My stupidity had me moaning about sagging doors for about 15 of my 60 or so nights in the shelter. Duh. Roll from the inside. Unclipping is easy when the squall rolls through too.
- Has anybody really found any use for the additional tie outs on the apexes? I usually stake then out long with my head and foot end stakes out of superstition but I don't know that they actually do anything.
- Get good strong stakes for the corners and mid points if winds are bad as I think that provides 99% if not all of the stability in wind (see above).
- As stated many times, just be sure to get good right angles on the corners and your pitch will be perfect.
- Like almost all hiking pole tents, when you have the doors open the entire structure gets flabby and flops around. Annoying on windy clear days but pat of the package.
- Wish it was easier to use just the inner. I've seen the work-arounds and they are sub optimal.
- Huge footprint for a solo tent, huge vestibules and tiny inner. Just know that.
- It can be hard to get the inner on the right angle because of the non 45 degree offset compared to the outer. I think the inner is maybe "twisted" about 25 degrees. That's brilliant because of the vestibules it creates. But it can be hard to get your body angle right on sloped sites. I usually try to mock up the interior to get my head position right then softly mock up the corners before staking. Really hard to get right but you'll get it eventually.
- I have the Notch and I HATE IT. As in can't stand that tent. When people compare this to the Notch I cringe as this tent is better in almost every way. The weird foot end struts that bunch up, the need for super wide 90 degree guylines, super tight, poor wind performance. Let me know if you want to buy one for cheap. I only say this as I've seen lots of comparisons to the Notch.
- Dan, none of my darned business but you should get off of the Drop ecosystem and sell these yourself. Drop has gone down hill since they deleted the ultralight section and focused on headphones and trinkets that can be purchased elsewhere for cheaper and delivered whenever. I generally don't use drop any more and bought your tent on ebay because I didn't want to wait for a year to fund your PO's. You can do it. You've proved the market for your designs and I can't wait to see whatever else you have up your sleeve. COUGH PRO COUGH. I say this humbly as an admirer of your excellent thought process. Massdrop (RIP) was an interesting novelty for a model. Not any more.

(Edited)

dandurston

5116

Dan Durston

Sep 11, 2020

SeannevesThanks for the thoughts and feedback. I'm glad you're really liking the tent. Regarding that hole, there was an issue in the original batch of tents (spring 2019) where the grommet layout wasn't compatible with all poles (e.g some poles had tips that were too long and could damage the fly) but we have revised this in all subsequent batches and we haven't seen any further reported cases. You mention getting yours off of eBay - perhaps it is one from the initial batch? The newer design has a bit lower grommet and the easiest way to tell is that the newer ones have webbing on top of the grommet so the pole tip won't even touch the 210D. For repair, you really need to relieve the pressure for a repair to last. That could be using different poles, or adding rubber washers to the grommets (see here). With that done, you can seal it from the outside with silicone (since it is sil coated on the outside), and/or also put some sage colored tenacious tape on the PEU coated underside. I tried this and slipped some tape into the cut to close it from the inside and then sealed the cut from the outside with silicone. Other comments:

You can increase the inner width by connecting the inner door toggles to the fly. That pulls it out about 6" wider at shoulder height. I'm mulling over how I might trade some vestibule space for more inner space but it's tricky because I don't want to make the fly larger/wider, and if I simply expanded the inner into a vestibule it would tricky with the pole there, plus it wouldn't be protected from rain when the door is opened.
I'm not quite sure what you mean about not being able to roll the doors from the outside. Are you cinching the door toggles loops closed to cinch the roll into place? The idea is you pass the cordlock through the loop, and then cinch it down to secure the roll.
The peak guylines certainly help under big snow loads, as the weight on the canopy will want to pull the peaks inward otherwise. I think they help in the wind too, but the tent is quite stable without, so I almost never use them for wind. If someone doesn't have a great pitch, then they do help more in the wind but it would be better to just have a good pitch.
When you open the door, tension on that side is released so the adjacent corner move away and the end walls of the tent get looser. You can avoid most of that if you use a stake at the doorway and angle it to hold the nearby corner from moving away, as I show here.
It would be nice to have a more elegant way to do a fly only pitch. You can buy spare buckles so you can clip guylines to the inner, but better yet would be to have webbing and grommets there too, plus a tensioner, so you can insert your poles into those grommets and snug them up tight. I'm looking into how I might offer this as an accessory.

Seanneves

Sep 11, 2020

dandurstonThanks for the quick reply Dan. I will try the grommet trick, thanks for the specs. Knowing me I'll need 10 of them on hand. Correct I think it was a first run tent. On the door roll up, if performed from outside, the "roll" unravels and the upper section of the door unravels partially. I am using the toggles and loop correctly as far as I can tell. This seems to happen no matter what for me. Maybe my loop is too far down the side or something? Anyway if I roll from the inside it works fine and the toggle/loop retainer is easier to release in a pinch downpour. Also thanks for the tip on the zipper stake. Seems much more stable when unzipped. I also added a longer line on the opposite side so I can porch the door a bit. Works a charm. All great ideas above. Cheers.

Sweetjond

Sep 12, 2020

SeannevesInteresting note on the fly door toggles for rolling them up: on my tent their position is not the same on each side. For one door, it’s closer to the midpoint. For the other, it’s noticeably higher, which does a poorer job with securing the door. I’ve been curious if that asymmetry was intentional, but I can’t see why since it’s literally the only asymmetry I’ve noticed in the entire tent.

dandurston

5116

Dan Durston

Sep 13, 2020

SweetjondInteresting. No the door toggles should be the same on both sides. Sorry about that - I haven't heard of this before. The door toggle location has been a tricky one to get optimized. If someone does a nice job of rolling up the door (e.g. a nice tight roll) then it's ideal to have the door toggle at about the center to hold roll best (as you note). However, if someone does a looser/sloppy roll then a single toggle in the center won't hold that well enough and it will unravel/hang down at both ends. In that case, a door toggle closer to the upper end is better because it keeps it rolled up there, even while the less important bottom end isn't held well. But this higher toggle location is less good for those that roll nicely because it's no longer centered and thus even with a nice roll it may not be able to hold the bottom (as you note). So basically nice door rollers benefit from a toggle near the midpoint while hasty door rollers benefit from a toggle higher up.

Sweetjond

Sep 15, 2020

dandurstonI’ve got the best of both worlds then - whoohoo! Thanks again so much for my incredible home on the JMT!!

pblogic

Oct 11, 2020

dandurstonEDIT: Read one of your replies and I see you already had this idea lol. I was just looking at the pictures from the guy that offered buckles, and I was thinking... What about attaching one of those buckles to a piece of grosgrain or webbing, just like the buckle setup that attaches the inner to the fly, then put a grommet in the webbing for a pole tip, and then another grommet directly after to tie on a guy line with a tensioner, then you could clip it, stake it, and adjust, and it would raise very similarly to the way the fly raises? Attaching the buckle to some nylon and adding grommets would be much better than wrapping a line around the pole tip, and add very little weight. It should also be very cheap to produce.

(Edited)

dandurston

5116

Dan Durston

Oct 12, 2020

pblogicYeah hopefully I can figure out a way to get them produced. Just a bit tricky but it's just a modest quantity of an inexpensive items. Factories aren't exactly excited to make 100 of a $10 part. I'm trying to find someone that wants to.

Vote

View Full Discussion

Company

About Drop Studio Student Discount Privacy Policy Terms of Use Cookie Settings

Drop Refurbished

Like-new products you can trust

Drop Rewards

Get $5 for every 500 points you earn! Learn more

Drop Keyboard Club

Become a member and expand your keycap collection

Collaborate With Us

For Brands & Designers

Support

Contact Community Guidelines Help Center Sitemap

Follow Drop