Increasing the strength of the MoonLight 2's weakest direction
Just 4.2 grams of cord (included) is needed to do this lovely little hack.The wind tunnel data for the MoonLight tents looks like this:
The eye is drawn to those gigantic numbers on the right but my designer's mind is drawn to that '21' on the MoonLight 2. It's not a bad result, especially remembering that it's for the tent starting to move around - not crushing it or breaking it - and it was done without any guylines (as are all the numbers given here). But I have a really simple hack that brings up the wind speed in that direction to about 26 mpg (and probably increases the 26 to about 30).
Tent strength is all about restricting the movement of the poles and the MoonLight design lends itself to a really simple way to do that directly: just add two little non-stretch cords to each of the two corners as shown below and, voila, suddenly the tent can't flex in a way where the upper clips move away from the foot of the pole. And since the upper clips are connected directly into the poles with S-stoppers, that means that the poles can't move either. It's a sweet little modification that only takes a few minutes and little cord.
Note: you leave the cords on. They don't get in the way of anything. Just leave them on.
The cord came in a little bag. There are two a little longer and two a little shorter. The longer ones go on the left in the photo above. the shorter go on the right, the door side. BTW this cord is the same reflective 1.5mm Dyneema line used in the guylines. It's breaking strength is about 120 pounds (with knots).
1) Stake the tent out
2) Attach the cords
You can use any knot you want. You don't undo them or adjust them once they're set. Note that there just happens to be two holes in the corner hardware (called a "Jake's Foot") that couldn't be better placed for what we need here.
The upper clips don't have special holes so you'll have to tie the cord into the same slot as the webbing. I recommend unclipping the clips to attach the cord, then fine-tuning it to get the tension right.
You want the final cord tension to be just snug but not so tight that it wrinkles the fabric or moves the poles from their uncorded position.
