Army Surplus Gore-Tex(?) Tent Design Review (£40, 1370g)

Background

So I was in the Army Surplus store to shelter from the rain and I started to rummage through there selection of bivi bags to see if there was anything interesting.

I found this one bag that seemed odd to me - it had peg loops on it, it had these weird strips on the back of it, it had a half-length zip and it was quite roomy. After getting it out on the floor and having a real close look at it I realized that it was actually a Gore-Tex tent. It was priced the same as all the usual surplus bags so I thought it worth a closer look.

Basic Details

I'm not certain it's Gore-Tex but the fabric internally looks like 3-layer Gore-Tex and has "Air Permeable" written on it in English and it feels just like the British Army bag's fabric. It was in the "Grade 1" bin and has clearly been issued (has a name on it) and came without pole or pegs or bag. There are no obvious signs of damage and the only sign of wear is that one zip is missing its cord loop.

From the pictures you can see it is very roomy with plenty of space for stuff at the foot and the head. Of course this space comes at a price. The bivi bag alone weighs in at 1370g.

Since it's an army-issue thing I have to wonder under what circumstances it would be used; what do the design features point to? Would it be used as an overnight shelter? Would it be set up and left for several days? Why so much space - is it designed to take a 4-season bag and a guy in full combat gear? Why a half-length zip - that's unusual on an army bag.

Design Features #1 - Shape and fittings

The bag is I think the largest I've ever seen so there is some wriggle room when you are fully zipped in.

There are three zips in the bag.

There is one half-length 2-way zip on the bag. This is covered with a protective flap which will press-stud in place. The Zip is raised above ground level and so once you are in the bag it should be puddle-safe.

The second zip is for the hood. This is a one-way right-2-left zip and again is covered by a press-studded flap. The flap is generous and based on other bivis that I've used should stop driving rain reaching the zip and the zip leaking. Of course with this design of hood it would make sense to pitch the hood into the wind....

Finally, zip 3 is for the mesh grill. The mesh can be zipped in or unzipped and folded away with some toggles. I could see this making a nice star-watching setup.....

The bag has six peg points - one on each corner and one on each end of the pole - plus a guy-line loop at the top of the pole. If you had tree-cover or a tarp pole you could use the guy-line and ditch the loop pole. The two foot-peg loops help to shape a bath-tub floor which in turn helps to keep the half-length zip off the floor.

Design Features #2 - Mesh and hood

I really like the way this hood is set up. It's easy to see myself wrapped up warm and watching the stars. safe from bugs and weather. If there were no bugs you could unzip the mesh and just look at the scenery directly.

Headroom is not great but it's not zero and that's more than you usually get for a bivi bag. The big thing is that you can keep the fabric mostly clear of your face.

Design Features #3 - Half Length Zip

Most bivi bags that I've used and made do not have side-zips in them. There are good design reasons for avoiding zips - they leak. However, when you have a tent design you have more control over how the bivi bag moves around during sleep and so more control about where the zip goes.

What the zip does do is make the bag easy to get into and out of and easy to vent. Getting into or out of a bivi bag when it's raining is just a bitch. Keeping cool when the night is warmer than expected is also a bitch. That's why the zip helps.

Design Feature #4 - Sleeping Mat holder

The mat shown is a standard 5-season full-length (182cm) mat. You can seem from this that the bag is much taller than the mat.

This is the first time I've ever seen a mat holder built into a bivi bag. It's something I experimented with on some of my own designs and it does have some merit to it.

From this design feature we can see how the bag is to be used. Having the mat underneath does of course maximise the Gore-Tex surface area and does help to protect the Gore-Tex from damage on rough ground. This 3-layer stuff is very tough but it's not indestructible.

With the bag pegged out and the mat in place it's all going to work just fine.

Accessories

Obviously I've had to supply tent pegs and a hoop. I have a pool of tent pegs used for tarps so that's no hardship.

For the pole I bought an 8.5mm Aluminium Tent Pole Repair Kit from Blacks in a sale. It comes with 7 poles. I've taken 3 poles - one pole without connectors and two with - and then chopped them down to size. I was fortunate in my measurements and cutting 18" off the total pole lengths did the trick. As you can see the poles are cheap and the middle one has bent under fitting. That's fine because I just need the loop to be stable and under tension (and so wind resistant) when fitted and it is.

The poles are obviously not designed for this bag and so what I do is stick an inverted tent peg through each pole hole on the bag and let that lock the pole into position on each side.

So in total then we have the 3-segment pole and eight tent pegs. The pole weighs 80g and the pegs 6g each giving as a total accessory weight of 128g. Not a lot.

Conclusions

What we are looking at then is a 1500g Gore-Tex tent for around £50 by the time you've made the pole. But 1500g is as heavy as many twin-skin 1-man tents and heavier than many Gore-Tex bags. It's certainly a lot heavier than many tarp-tents that you can buy and heavier than many tarp and ground-sheet combos. It's also at least 600g heavier than any of my usual setups for backpacking. So why on earth would you use such a beast?

It's really about horses for courses. When I'm camping in the mountains I prefer to have something more bomb-proof than lightweight. On an exposed mountain in fading daylight I don't want to be faffing around looking for the perfect piece of ground; instead I just want to find a tiny piece of shelter - maybe a dip in the ground or a gorse bush and bed down.

I can see this bag working really nicely for an overnight in the hills with the hood set to face either a sunrise or a sunset.

This Army surplus stuff is never the lightest or newest stuff on the market but it is tough and serviceable and cheap. The RRP for the equivalent tent in Civvy street is around £200 and the design is nowhere near as good or as usable.

Over the years I've begun to appericate what good value this army surplus stuff can be.

Final Thoughts

These days I have roughly four standard camping setups for backpacking.

1. A chopped army surplus Gore-Tex bivi bag and solo micro tarp. This gives me a bomb-proof setup I can use anywhere and weighs in around 800g.

2. A twin-skin tent that is based on a larger, lighter version of this tarp with a proper bell at the front and then a 350g 'coffin' style inner tent. This gives me a comfortable setup with room for relaxing together with the warmth that a proper small inner tent gives.

3. Some sort of tarp with a simple SilNylon bath-tub ground sheet.

4. Nothing at all. On a warm night a mat on a groundsheet and a sleeping bag on it's own will be enough - as long as you have a "Plan B" ready should you need it.

There's not one perfect setup. It's a case of knowing what you like, what you might need and what the trade-offs might be.

I can see this tent being used for overnights in the mountains where I'm only doing short walk-ins. I cannot see it being used on multi-day hikes unless they are mountainous and a long weekend say.