Field Tests 1 & 2

The first field test was 2 nights, but provided conditions that generated some improvement.

The first night was in Montgomery Bell State Park in Tennessee east of Nashville. Montgomery Bell is a nice place and worth camping. It rained that night. We had the first viable version of the tent and cover, and they worked well together. The next night of testing was in west Texas. The tent and cover worked well enough and into the day after, but as the winds rose above 50 mph and forecast to reach 65 the tent struggled a bit (yes, that's unusual even for that part of the country). We decided to implement a change that would improve wind resistance. It was something we had been considering for a while and the high winds convinced us to go ahead. That turned out to be an important change that improved the camper in several ways. The tent became both smoother aerodynamically and stiffer as a structure.

The second field testing trip was our first extended trip. There were 10 nights of camping at 5 different parks in September 2022. The first stop was Maumelle Park Arkansas - one of our favorites (see the blog post for Maumelle Park); then a few nights at the 2022 Okie-Tex Star Party at Camp Billy Joe Oklahoma (far west end of the panhandle); then south to Palo Duro State Park outside Amarillo; then to Davis Mountains State Park near Fort Davis, then to the Chisos Basin in Big Bend NP.

It was the first trip with modifications to the tent that came out of the first field test - also to west Texas. We moved the awnings from the cover to the tent and eliminated the cover completely. (Though we were later to incorporate a new cover - see "Field Test 3" blog post).

The tent seams were sealed and we wanted to test how well the tent would keep out the rain without a cover. It worked well. We had a couple of rain showers but no water penetrated the tent. But it wasn't a test in prolonged rain and we remained skeptical that a single layer tent would work in all conditions. We ultimately decided that a cover had to be provided. That resulted in a unique cover design described in another blog post.

The Cumberland was subjected to high winds in Big Bend on this trip. I started camping in the Chisos Mountains when I was a kid with a couple of ponchos for a tent. I never encountered high winds there until recently. It seems that heavy winds with gusts over 50mph are no longer unusual in the Chisos. A few years ago, we were in our 4 place North Face dome tent one night. We had it staked to the ground, but had we not been inside weighing it down it would not have stayed in the campground. We had the same kind of winds this trip in the Cumberland, but the camper is designed to be stiff when set up and to shed wind. It did fine.

On this trip, the tent guy lines were attached to stakes in the ground. That was changed for the next field test. The guy lines now are attached to points on the trailer so that nothing has to contact the ground but tires, tongue jack, and the two leveling jacks. Nothing has to be hammered into the ground. That also means that the Cumberland can be used on a concrete pad. Field Test 3 demonstrated that the new guy line configuration also withstands high winds. High wind with strong gusts will rock the trailer a little but it otherwise endures the wind.