I'm having some issues with pitching my Double Rainbow and hoping someone
can help. I neglected to take pics of it erected, but you can guess
the vestibules aren't tight with a fair amount of 'wind wave' in the
breeze and can be folded over on themselves 2" or so.

Here's how I pitched it (after watching the video on the Tarptent site):
1) Ran the ridge pole through the sleeve
2) Set the ridge pole in each of the grosgain eyelets
3) Stake corners on either side of the ridge pole making sure there is
some stretch to the elastic corner loops
4) Go to the other side of the tent, adjust the ridge pole placement
so that it is perpendicular with the other side then stake each corner
5) Stake each vestibule

I've pitched a few times and get the same results each time so at
least I'm consistent. These pics make me think the buckle on the ridge
poles must be taken in too much, but I clearly remember wondering what
their the use was at all since they were sightly loose and any attempt
to take them in would potentially rip the material I'm guessing.

Thanks,
Kevin

Pics are here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s74yywi5o33a3wp/IO0CK-l76M

you don't stake the corners, you attach them to the guylines. (or the loops that the guylines are attached to.)

the stake goes in the guyline loophole at the end.

it looks like the side strap and clip are on the inside of the tent... if so i'm not sure what the purpose is, but if they were on the outside you can pull the sides out for more space. i prefer mine about midway up.

Did you check the setup video on the website?

If not:

https://www.tarptent.com/double-rainbow.html#videos

First, like the poster above said, it looks like your aren't tensioning the corners enough to pull the bathtub floor up.

Second you forgot to clip the bathtub to the fly at the ridgeline/pole (on the short sides of the shelter) to raise the sides of the floor up.

It's also hard to see, but did you clip the corners of the bathtub into the guyline tie outs at the corners?

I had the same problem with the vestibules. For a while I couldn't get them taught and one side would always be flapping around in the wind. I have figured out a couple things that mostly alleviate this. First this seems to be very sensitive to how you pith the four corners. If you imagine looking at the tent from above the floor forms a rectangle. If you can picture this, I found you need to make sure the angle angle between each side of the tent and the corner stakes are 45 degrees. It is very sensitive to this. Also trying to pitch the vestibule too low seems to make this worse. I usually use 8 inch stakes for the vestibules so I can pitch them high enough. I am thinking though that I am going to put 4 attachment points at the bottom of the 4 vestibule panels so I could guy them out. This would completely solve the problem. Not sure what is going on with your floor.

OK, so it definitely sounds like my corners are pitched incorrectly, which I had wondered about. I'd like to deal with this first. Oh, and I definitely did watch the pitching video on the website, though I clearly missed something.

(not sure how much of this is affected by vintage - mine is a 2007)
1) The corners of the bathtub floor have a loop of elastic cord on them (outside, not the inside floor height adjustment)
2) The tarp has the guyout on it of course.

What I did (as can be seen in fly_stake.jpg - top row 4th over) is stake through the elastic loop on either side of the ridgepole so that the elastic was tensioned. I then did this on the opposite side. At that point I attached the tarp corner guyout lines to the stakes and tensioned.

It sounds like I should have staked the tarp corner guyouts first and then, did something with the floor elastic loops?

Kevin, you're absolutely on the right track! Basically you got the order backwards. Stake the fly THEN attach the elastic.

By staking the bathtub first you aren't getting enough tension and the bathtub is not being raised. The design is to stake the tarp out as tight as possible (stake the guylines on the tarp corners actually, then tension once you have everything squared up nice). Then you just hook the elastic bathtub cord to the tieout on the tarp as seen in the setup video at minute 1:30.

The way you have your tarp/fly staked is wrong. You want the cord directly attached to the stake. Using that fabric flap isn't how it's designed. You probably can't get enough tension on the fly as you have it. The fabric loop is there for putting trekking a pole through so that you can make the tarptent freestanding as see in the end of the setup video.

Hope you get this figured out =)

Thanks Dustin. That helps out. In fact, I think I'll run home for lunch and give this another go. I don't have a clip on the bathtub elastic as shown in the video at ~1:30, so that was part of the confusion. Hopefully I'll report back with good results!

Kevin
Have a look at this video I shot sometime ago on the Rainbow.
Some details are only relevant to the new versions but the set up should help you to see how to do it.
Rainbow tips

Franco

Edited by Franco on 06/26/2012 17:30:31 MDT.