How to pitch a tent (specifically the NEMO Dagger 3P)

[travisap]

After using the Nemo Dagger 3P a handful of times I have yet been able to successfully pitch it correctly to deter water from accumulating on the rain fly. Does anyone have any tips on how to pitch a tent better, specifically a NEMO tent like this one? Thanks!

Google drive link of photos (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1odBUaBeXN5qKtm0Hts1vTEIgO_pEr3MEOMraqUgDPc4/edit?usp=sharing) (attachments might be the wrong orientation).

[Tipi Walter]

It looks like you need to get the poles higher and tighter away from the inner tent---meaning where the poles connect on the bottom perimeter needs to be cinched in tight---causing the fly to be drum tight.

Your pics are a perfect example of why I'll never use a tent with a mesh inner.

[johnacraft]

After using the Nemo Dagger 3P a handful of times I have yet been able to successfully pitch it correctly to deter water from accumulating on the rain fly. Does anyone have any tips on how to pitch a tent better, specifically a NEMO tent like this one?

It looks like you did a good job of getting the floor taut, and you get points for staking out the ends for ventilation. I think where you can improve is to evenly tension the rainfly properly at the corners so that it is taut before staking out the vestibule and ends. Tightening up the rainfly leads should help the rainfly shed water while making the tent stronger in wind.

It looks like you compounded that error by adding the guylines shown attached to rocks in photos 3 and 5. I think they might have made the problem worse.
Generically speaking, the steps I would follow are:

1. Lay out the tent, assemble the poles, attach the tent to the poles, and tautly stake the tent floor.

2. Install the rainfly and tension all four corners evenly. There should be velcro on the corner seams inside the rainfly opposite a guyout point on the outside - make sure that velcro is securely attached around the pole. These corner guyout points are important in windy conditions (see 4. below).

3. Stake out the ends, then the vestibule. At this point the rainfly should shed water properly because it's uniformly taut. If not, adjust the rainfly - adding lines is not the solution.

4. If additional guy lines are needed because of winds, start with the guyouts attached to the poles at the velcro points mentioned in 2. (See this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha43JNTtus4) for some tips.) The point of these lines is to keep the poles from deflecting due to wind pressure on the rainfly, not to help tighten the rainfly.

If there's a prevailing wind direction, point one end of the tent into the wind and attach one ore even two guyouts to each of the windward corner poles. If the winds are changing direction, guy all four corner poles.

5. The remaining guyout points (such as the ones shown in photos 3 and 5) don't add much to the strength of the tent, and I don't recommend using them before the ones mentioned in 4. above.

[Franco]

You cannot change the pole height with that tent
44377
but you can apply more tension on the fly by pulling the fly corner tie outs and the same for the door panels a bit more. Best to be done before the fly gets wet.
44378
BTW, I think that you have the end stakes spread out too far , close to 3 and 9 ( on a clock face...) try 4 and 8. Come to think of it, that would push the poles up a bit...)

[Leo L.]

My MSR Hubba Hubba NX is pretty similar to the tent in your pics, and honestly I belive the basic cut of those tents is in a way that it never can form a perfectly tight rainfly without any creases and slack.

To give your setup a better appearence you may try to place the plugs in the corners of the floor a bit more spread out diagonally.
After some experimenting (and NOT reading the instruction sheet) I came to the solution to plug down the head-side corners of the floor first, setup the poles second, clip in the inner third, and place the remaining two floor plugs last.

Up to my experience to use a simple stone instead of a plug will not work. If wind pulls on the tieout, the stone will slip thus slacking the rainfly, no matter how big the stone is.
You will be better off by using a plug and weight down the plug by means of a stone.

[Franco]

To give your setup a better appearence you may try to place the plugs in the corners of the floor a bit more spread out diagonally.


That is pretty much the opposite to my suggestion so it would be interesting if the OP tried both to see if either makes any difference.

[Leo L.]

Maybe its just my poor English, but I belive we both mean the same.
Basically, there is exactly one single right way to tension the tent floor evenly without any creases or plaids, and usually on a good tent the corner straps are attatched at an angle that follows exactly the direction of tension you need to apply to achieve exactly this: An evenly laid-out floor, which finaly should lead to a perfectly setup tent, exactly following the way it was designed.

But then, as said before, the specific shape of tents like the one in the pics of the OP, makes it very hard or even impossible to find a cut for every single sheet the tent is made of that would give the setup tent a perfect tension all around.

[Franco]

It's not your English but the way I read it.
If I could write in German as you do in English I would.
As it is I can't even write confidently anymore in Italian, my native language.