Matt Whiting wrote:
Tom McQuinn wrote:

This is my third year in a row at Osh and the second time I've had a
department store tent fail me. Never again. My 'C' brand tent with
its 'guarantee' to keep me dry is going to a yard sale and I don't
care if it sells for 75 cents. It isn't worth the closet space it
would otherwise take up. I am very interested in any brands of tent
that anyone could recommend. Because if I do this again I intend to
stay dry somehow. I did notice that some of the manufacturers make
rain flys that will keep water out as long as the tent is standing. I
gotta get me one of those!


I have a Coleman Classic tent that is more than 20 years old now. I
don't know if Coleman even sells it, but it survived the storms of OSH
in 1995. It is an 8x10 and has something like 16 or 18 peg loops around
the bottom. I carry an ammo box with rail road spikes to use as tent
pegs. My friend teased me about carrying all of that weight to OSH (but
the Skylane was easily up to the task!), but he stopped teasing me when
my tent was one of the few that survived the thunderstorms intact and
even dry inside.

This isn't a lightweight tent and isn't made for backpacking, but it is
a robust tent that doesn't leak and has held up well during 20 some
years of use. I'm on the second fly as they don't hold up well due to
the tension on them, but the tent is still in decent shape.

Matt
We bought a Eureka after I did extensive research on brands and models.
Somewhere there is/was a website that had wind ratings for tents. I
found that one very interesting. This year I took on a very slight
amount of water as I THOUGHT I didn't have any seam sealer (found an
empty). When I was packing up the tent I found THREE bottles of seam
sealer in the peg bag (Ron pegged the tent). Even without the seams
sealed the tent only took on about a cup of water during Monday's storm.

Margy