Reviews > Shelters > Tarps and Bivys > Hilleberg Rajd > Ralph Ditton > Initial Report

INITIAL REPORT
HILLEBERG RAJD SHELTER
REPORT BY: RALPH DITTON
REPORT DATE: 30th AUGUST, 2006

(Courtesy of Hilleberg the Tentmaker)
Personal Information

I have evolved from being a heavyweight backpacker of approximately 28 kg (62 lb) including all my water and food to a mid- weight backpacker averaging 18 kg (40 lb). I am still trying to get lighter with better equipment. My trips range from overnighters to five days duration.

Product Information
Manufacturer: Hilleberg the Tentmaker, USA
Manufacturer's Website: http://www.hilleberg.com
Year of Manufacture: 2006
Model: Rajd
Colour: Green
Sleeping Capacity: 2
Number of poles supplied: 2
Pole thickness: 13 mm (0.5 in)
Poles made by: DAC
Fabric of shelter: Kerlon 1200
Door configuration: 2
Guy lines: 2 mm (0.07 in) Spectra-blend cord
Fabric of floor: Kerlon 1200
Number of walls: 1
Tear strength of Kerlon 1200: 12 kg (26.4 lb)
Factory seam sealed: Yes
Zips: YKK
Shelter pegs: 10
Shelter pegs material: Aluminium
MSRP of shelter: US$285
MSRP of poles:US$35
MSRP of Rajd footprint: US$32
Total MSRP: US$352

Listed Measurements
Weight of shelter: 950 g (2 lb 2 oz)
Height of peak: 115 cm (45.3 in)
Area: 2.4 m² (25.8 ft²)
Number of pegs: 10 square pegs
Weight of Kerlon 1200: 50 g/m² (1.47 oz/yd²)
Note
The manufacturer states that the weight of the shelter includes the guy lines and 10 pegs only.

My Measurements
Weights
Weight of shelter: 840 g (1 lb 14 oz)
(including guy lines only)
Weight of a single peg : 10 g (0.35 oz)
Weight of 10 pegs and stuff sack : 106 g (3.74 oz)
Weight of peg stuff sack: 6 g (0.21 oz)
Weight of footprint : 233 g (8.22 oz)
Weight of footprint stuff sack: 15 g (0.53 oz)
Weight of 2 poles: 275 g (9.7 0z)
Weight of pole stuff sack: 9 g (0.32 oz)
Total weight of shelter plus pegs and guy lines: 946 g (2 lb 1.37 oz)

Lengths
Packed size of shelter: 27 cm x 16 cm (10.63 in x 6.3 in)
Circumference of shelter in stuff sack: 48 cm (18.9 in)
Length of pole: 115.5 cm (45.47 in)
Length of pole section: 42.2 cm (1 ft 4½ in)
Number of pole sections per pole: 3

Expectations from the Web site
I was intrigued by the title of a hybrid shelter. According to the manufacturer it is a blend of tarp and tent.
 I do not camp using a tarp due to too many "bities" present, especially ants and spiders. I either use a tent or the hut that may be available.
I expected a very lightweight shelter made out of a product very similar to silnylon. There would be no frills inside the shelter like pockets to stow items in, nor a vestibule to stow the backpack and boots.
Upon arrival I examined the shelter and it certainly is a no frills unit, so my expectations from the web were correct.
What I did not count on but was very pleasantly surprised was the inclusion of the poles and footprint as they are optional extras.

Product Description
The shelter is big enough for two people but extremely spacious for one and a 90 litre (5492 cu in) backpack.
The stuff sack appears to be made out of the same material as the shelter, Kerlon 1200.
The Rajd is made up as a single fabric shelter wholly constructed from Kerlon 1200 that had a sewn in floor, roof and sides. There is no inner tent.
To allow ventilation and air flow there is a triangle of mesh in each of the two doors as seen in the photo below.

mesh panel
The YKK zipper, there are two on each zip track, open from the top of the shelter and at the tub level changes direction to the right, as I face it from outside, ending 340 mm (13 in) from the corner. This allows for a generous open door to enter and exit from.
At the top of the tent where the zip starts, there is a reinforced pocket to accommodate the pole tip, branch or trekking pole which can be seen in the above photo.
The little awning over the doorway can also be zippered open or closed, depending on weather conditions. When unzipped, the little awning is rolled back to the leading edge of the shelter and held in place by a piece of black elastic that hooks onto a plastic catch. The same arrangement exists for the doors.
All of the zippers have a dual handle, one to operate from the inside and the other from the outside.
The corners of the shelter are all reinforced with double stitching and triangular pieces of additional black material on the inside.
Stitched along a seam to where the tub starts is a white warning label advising to keep all flames and heat sources away from the fabric as it is not fire-proof. The next heading is "Caution! Read Carefully". There are five points raised. The first one is about flames and not cooking inside the shelter. The rest are about the pitching of the shelter. Finally, as an afterthought there is mention made of cleaning the zippers and packing the shelter dry and clean. Common sense really.

On top of the shelter at the reinforced points where the poles go, there is a black plastic ring that allows the shelter to be pitched without any pole like item. Simply pass a cord through the ring and tie off to another object at a higher angle that will allow the ridge line to hang  and thereby form the shelter.

The shelter comes with 6 guy lines made out of a proprietary cord with interwoven strong Spectra fiber. The cords are light and according to the manufacturer absorb almost no water and have minuscule stretch.
The guy lines come with polymer guy line runners that allow for quick and easy adjustment of the guy lines.

To hold the shelter in place, there are 10 aluminium pegs. They are square in the shaft, have a hook at the top for the guy line and a hole with a cord at the very top to allow the peg to be pulled out of the ground easily.

top of tent peg
I was supplied with a set of poles that are an optional extra. They are DAC poles and are shock corded. Judging by the size when folded up into their three sections, the poles will fit inside my backpack even laying length ways which is something I can not do with my current tent poles. I can only stand them upright.
The tips of the poles have a rounded cap/
.
tip of pole
The other optional extra that I received was the footprint. It measures 2 m 30 mm (6 ft 8 in) x 1 m 245 mm (4 ft 1 in) and is black in colour. It comes in its own stuff sack. All the manufacturer states is that the fabric is extremely waterproof and highly puncture and abrasion resistant.
Each corner has two strips of elastic stitched at one end which are used to tie to the corners of the shelter.

Attached to the stuff sack of the shelter was a set of instructions in three languages, Swedish, German and English. The instructions are adequate for the task of erecting the shelter, with or without poles.
There is a single page instruction sheet in a plastic envelope, in English, giving the barest  minimum information on how to pitch the shelter.

single page instruction sheet

stuff sack with instructions attached
Initial Impressions
Opening the box that the shelter arrived in, I was surprised to see the tags attached to the shelter stuff sack and footprint stuff sack.
The footprint stuff sack tag was basically a label stating that it contained a footprint for the Rajd and on the reverse a signature from the person checking the item as "Controlled by".
As mentioned above, the shelter stuff sack had the two instructions and a checked label also.
On both stuff sacks, the labels were threaded through by the draw cords of the stuff sacks.
I undid the knot on the draw cord of the shelter stuff sack so that I could remove the instructions as this made it easier to pull the shelter out of the stuff sack. Trying to thread the draw cord back into the locking clip was an interesting exercise. I am no sewer in that I have difficulty in threading cotton through the eye of a needle. In this exercise I had the added difficulty of a spring wanting to close off the hole, but I got there.
There was a thank you letter from the President of Hilleberg, Petra Hilleberg. I should be thanking Petra for the opportunity to test the shelter.
In addition there was a sheet with three samples of fabric used in their tents. The topic was the relative merits of their respective tear strengths.
There was also included a 2006 & 2007 Tent Handbook listing their products and technical information.

I extracted the shelter and began to unroll it when I commented to myself out loud that there seemed to be a lot of guy lines because I came upon a mass of cord.
The next concern I had was what was the floor and roof as both were of the same material and I had not completely unrolled the shelter. Which way do I lay it on the floor. Logic told me to follow the guy lines as they tend to be near the top. This I did and found the roof. I initially had it upside down. Having the guy lines already attached was a very big help in that I was able to determine the correct sections of the shelter and I think I would have found attaching the guy lines a bit tricky, especially the rear ones as the instructions do not cover this. Picture 5 in the "Rajd Instruction" booklet has an insert photo showing the lines but they are extremely faint to see. In fact I needed a magnifying glass to see the guy lines and then I could only just make them out a little better.
Inside the rolled up shelter there was a bag of tent pegs with a label stuck to the draw cord. It had the numeral 10 on both sides. I guess it meant that this was a 10 tent peg bag as there were 10 tent pegs inside.
I had never seen this style of tent peg before so I am very interested to see how they perform in the different types of soils that I camp on.

tent peg bag
The next item that I opened was the tent pole bag and I was immediately surprised by the thickness of the poles. I am used to tent poles of between 7.5 mm to 9 mm ().29 in to 0.35 in).
When I thought about it, this shelter can be propped up with sticks and trekking poles and they can be relatively thick.
There were two poles broken down into three sections each. A shock cord passed through the centre of the poles.

shock corded tent pole
The male component of the tent pole is 50 mm (1.96 in) long as seen on the left of the above photo. This makes for a stable pole that should not fail in adverse weather conditions.

I next unpacked the footprint and spread it out to see how big it was. The measurements are listed under "Product Description". There is a fabric side and a "plastic type feel" side to the footprint. As I could not find any information on the material used to construct the footprint, it appears to be a Nylon coated with polyurethane. This is supposition on my part.

I went outside to pitch the shelter using the tent poles. I did not bother to time myself as I took my time to understand how it should be erected. I got it wrong the first time with the end guy lines. I brought the  guy lines back along the edge and passed them through the hooks located about halfway along the edge and then pegged them out at the 45 degree angle as mentioned in the instructions. It sort of worked. In reality the hooks are there to secure the doors when they are rolled back.

guy lines incorrectly employed
It just did not look right and the instructions are a bit vague so the next day I tried again. As I was pitching the shelter, the wind came up and made life a bit difficult as the pegs kept being pulled out from the new rolled out lawn that I tried to do it on. Perseverance paid off and I got it up minus some pegs that came out. They can be seen on the ground in the photo below at the rear of the shelter.
Out in the field I will not be pitching on newly laid grass so I do not place any importance on the pegs performance in this instance. The main thing was to see how the new configuration of the guy lines worked.

new configuration of guy lines
Folding and rolling up the shelter to put back in the stuff sack is not the easiest of task. The fabric is slippery and does not want to stay in place when being rolled and it traps air inside. As I got to nearing completion of the folding and rolling, I was faced with a big air bubble inside the fabric. It was a matter of placing the package against my chest and using my arm, squeezing the air out through the fabric. This took a few minutes to accomplish as I did it reasonably gently. Once the air was out it was still tricky to get the shelter back inside the stuff sack as it wanted to slip apart especially when I held it in one hand and used the other hand to open the stuff sack. I got there eventually, but not as neatly packed as I started off with nicely rolled.

Test Plan

• What is the optimum diameter of a branch that will fit into the pole-end cup?
• What is the optimum height of a branch needed to erect the shelter?
• How effective are the poles in staying in place as they do not have locking tips?
• I will time myself as to how long it takes to erect the shelter in a non-rushed manner so that an average camper will know what time to expect.
• Conversely, dismantling the shelter and packing away.
• I will comment on the effectiveness or limitations in using the rings on each corner of the ridge line to "hang" the shelter from the guy lines in lieu of using poles.
• I will also use fallen branches in lieu of poles to see if the are a good alternative and if I have to do a bit of breaking off of the branches to get the desired height.
• How efficient are the non-slip line runners used to tension the guy lines in demanding weather?
• Is it an effective method, or will there be slippage during the night when it is windy and wet?
• Is the shelter quick drying, inside and out whether being wet through condensation or rain?
• In very wet weather, will rain be able to enter through the no-see-um mesh?
• How effective is the footprint in providing protection from potential damaging sharp objects and abrasions? I will be removing the most obvious one that I can find.
• I will be commenting on the condensation issue as it is our spring and the weather will still be cool at night.
• How effective is the fabric in blocking out the early morning sun so that I do not wake up too early?
• Will the zippers catch on the fabric?
• If so, how easy or difficult is it to free the zippers from the fabric?
• Do the seams need to be seam sealed?
• Will it be stifling and uncomfortable inside the shelter on a warm day?
• When I lay down, I want to find out if the shelter is long enough without my head and foot end of my sleeping bag touching the walls of the shelter.
• How close does the single wall slope across my head and does it cause a claustrophobic feeling?
• What is the clearance from my face?
• Can I comfortably sit up inside the shelter without my head touching the roof of the shelter?
• Is the entry through the door to the inside of the shelter easy or is it too narrow and a bit of a squeeze due to the central pole?
• Will the stuff sack containing the shelter be long enough to be secured on the outside of my backpack, or if too short, do I have to remove it from the stuff sack and rearrange the folding of the shelter and wrap it in the footprint so that it can be secured on the outside?
• Will the material fade in our sunlight as we have a big hole in the ozone layer above us?
• How stable is the shelter in various types of wind?
• Will the fabric sag when wet?
• Can I lay my damp hiking clothes over the shelter to dry off without causing the shelter to (a) absorb moisture, (b) distort the shape and reduce the interior room by bending inwards?
• How easy is it to clean the shelter when I get home?

• Lightweight.
• Excellent interior space.
• Inclusion of tent poles and footprint.
• Lots of guy lines.
• Square tent pegs. Should be strong and not bend.
• Unique guy line runners.

• Lack of clear instructions on how to utilize the guy lines correctly at the rear of the shelter.

Reviews > Shelters > Tarps and Bivys > Hilleberg Rajd > Ralph Ditton > Initial Report