Force Ten Helium 100 tent…

In this, the second part of what may well be a short-lived spell of usefulness, I am going to give an overview of the tent I used during my last trip to South America.. Choosing a tent for a long bicycle adventure is a difficult choice to make… well, it is for me…. It is very much a case of trying to find a balance of light weight and small pack size against living space, sturdiness and durability. In the past I’ve even gone so far as building a matrix of the various characteristics of my tent shortlist to help me make a decision.. ya sad I know but that’s engineers for you 

Over the past couple of years I’ve come to the conclusion that the lowest sensible weight for a one-man tent expected to stand up to serious long term use and potentially extreme weather is probably between 1.2 and 1.5kg. There are lighter tents but to me they don’t really feel tough enough to withstand daily use and exposure to extreme weather.. I could be completely wrong of course but I’m only going to buy something that I’m comfortable with anyway so I no longer look at the ultra-light end of the tent-flavoured spectrum…

So.. for this last trip I took a Force Ten (Vango) Helium 100 (product page here: http://www.vango.co.uk/force-ten/helium-100.html). On paper it had all the qualities I was looking for… very small pack size for easy carrying on my bike, a quoted weight of around 1.2kg (always taken with a pinch of salt), theoretically just enough head room to sit up in and based on other Force Ten/Vango stuff I’ve experience of it was going to be well made and tough. It was good colour too for stealthy wild camping – olive green  Living space is pretty minimal but I always figure my tent as a place to spend a night before getting back on my bike so have never been that bothered about having extra space. I spent about 50 nights in this thing in a range of weather conditions so got to know it pretty well. I’m not going to write much about the design of it unless relevant to using it as you can find all that out from the product website.

a sub-zero morning.. Helium 100 and not-too-bright looking owner ;-)

The first thing I’ll say is that it is a warm tent… most tents in the lightweight category save weight by having an inner that is mostly mesh.. great in hot weather but not so good in cold or dusty conditions. The Helium has an inner mostly of a light ripstop nylon with just a small amount of mesh in the inner door. On balance I’d say this was a good thing in the environment I was riding in – as while very warm at times the inner was a practically dust free environment during many windy nights in the desert. A few years ago I took a North face Mountain Marathon in the Himalayas – the inner was almost entirely mesh above the floor pan and the thing filled up with dust very easily which was a right pain in the arse with camera gear and so on to think about. It also iced up easily on the inside of the fly, not that it’s really a problem I just thought I would mention it for a little extra drama ;-)

Ventilation options are very limited – there are no vents in the fly and no tag or similar fitted such that the door can be easily rolled or pinned back on a warm night. As a result it suffered pretty badly from condensation most of the time – most tents suffer to a degree but it was more noticeable in this being such a tiny living space – in the worst cases the foot of my sleeping bag would be wet in the morning if I’d forgotten to go out and re-tension the fly as the temperature fell at night. It probably wouldn’t be noticeable in UK-type weather as the difference between day and night is often only 10 degrees or less. In the deserts and altiplano of S America the temperature difference can be 30 degs so the fly often slackened right off at night. Not a fault of the tent as such, most tents suffer the same problem though in this single primary pole case it was exacerbated by greater reliance on guy tension to keep fly and inner separated. Having said that the air generally was so dry that the tent could be dried in the morning by the time I’d finished breakfast.

A really nice feature of the tent is that it pitches fly first, I didn’t have to suffer many rainy days and nights but when I did it was great to be able to pitch the fly and then keep everything else dry without any hassle. The inner is simply suspended from the fly by a series of toggles and can be left attached to the fly permanently meaning the tent can be pitched and dismantled as one – very quick and very handy when it’s wet. When de-pitching the tent on a wet morning I’d take the inner out and pack that in a dry bag to keep it dry while the outer I simply bundled up into a plastic bag on the back of my bike to be dried later if it stopped raining. Speaking of rain I was very impressed on the one night when it really lashed it down – camped by the lake at Coronel Moldes, just south of Salta, I had a night of violent thunderstorms and high winds sufficient to flood all the roads into Salta and leave the roads covered in debris stripped from the trees.. not a drop made it into the tent and I was able to rather enjoy the whole night of storms 

When pitched it’s a sturdy little thing, wind was very much a feature of southern Argentina.. especially one night camped with Mark on a high plateau between Villa Nueva and Las Flores. The wind was howling at galeforce and with no shelter to be had anywhere we camped in a small depression on the plains. Mark’s light Big Agnes tent was really suffering in the wind and he had to anchor the windward side to his bicycle to stop it collapsing.. my little green wedge however sat solid as a rock with the narrow end pitched into wind. It was a comfortable if noisy night. I had been envying the space Mark had in his tent up until that point…

a very windy evening, bicycle shaped anchor on Mark's Big Agnes

It is a very small space to live with, most nights in the wilderness I’d just leave my panniers outside the tent with my bike dumped on top, occasionally with the motion alarm activated if I thought there might be people around. Only on a couple of occasions did I feel the need to hide all my gear from view at night – I was able to just about wedge all my gear into the tiny vestibule though this did leave the fly looking somewhat ‘lumpy’ from the outside. Not really a major inconvenience. On a journey where I’d expect more rain I think in hindsight I would take a slightly larger tent and suffer the extra weight. Having a bigger tent might also be nice when camped in a bit of a shithole with no pleasant outdoor space… that happened a couple of times.

Right that’s the user experience so a little bit of detail to finish off with.. it’s very well made, I had no issues aside from a small bit of stitching coming loose on the inner door where the mesh was sewn into the zip. A drop of superglue fixed it  The stuff-sac did fall to pieces very quickly however Vango replaced it FoC on my return and the new one feels a heavier material so I guess they might have had some issues with early ones (I bought mine when it first came onto the market) and beefed it up a little since. The pegs supplied with mine I binned right away – too short to be of much use anywhere except pitched in a field with nice dense soil and sheltered from wind – they were so short as to be closer to tooth picks than tent pegs – a pretty pointless bit of weight saving. I replaced them with some very nice Alpkit titanium pegs.. which also proved a pretty pointless bit of weight saving as I was forever bending them out of shape in the hard, rocky conditions I encountered  I should have been less of a tart and taken something tougher!

That’s about it really, it performed well overall – given the range of conditions I had to cope with I doubt any tent would have been perfect – or if it was it would have been a drag to carry by bike. A little extra space would have been nice over the long term and next time I may well take the 2-man version but given its performance I’d say it’s a bit of a bargain for the bike traveller – you can pick them up for less than £150 at the moment which is in most cases around half the price of the obvious competition 

small pack-size, size 44 road shoe for comparison. Packed as shown with a couple of spare Alpkit tent pegs it weighs 1.22Kg.

By the way – I did use a separate footprint to protect the floor of the tent from wear – I just cut one from a bit of cheap polyester tarp before leaving home. Didn’t weigh much, cost bugger all and did the job very nicely.

Panasonic Lumix GF1

I haven’t written much of any use to anyone since I returned from South America so I think maybe it is about time I made the effort to generate some meaningful (relatively…) ramblings … so to that end I’ll occasionally write about some of the kit I used on that journey beginning today with my camera….

I remain very much dedicated to film and my manual rangefinder cameras … but there was no way I was going to carry 5 months worth of film in my panniers… I had 2 months worth with me in Colombia & Ecuador in 2008 and that was bulky enough… I can’t remember exactly how many rolls I took but it would have been at a minimum somewhere around 40. So with that in mind back in December last year I had to bite the proverbial bullet and ‘go digital’. I chose a micro-4/3 format Panasonic Lumix GF1 with the additional electronic viewfinder and 20mm (40mm equivalent) f1,7 lens. The primary drivers being that as a package with that lens the camera has a very similar form factor, albeit slightly smaller, to a 35mm rangefinder , and that fast 40mm equivalent lens is very close to my favourite 35mm/f2 lens I use for street photography. The electronic viewfinder is a separate purchase.. and it’s not exactly cheap… but I hate shooting with an LCD on the back. The pics below show the GF1 with 20mm lens and viewfinder alongside a Zeiss Ikon with a 35mm Biogon lens.

Now this isn’t a ‘review’ of the camera, it’s been around long enough that there are plenty of those already available.. in particular I’d recommend this one on The Luminous Landscape here. Rather what I’m trying to do is give a brief perspective on it as someone who prefers to shoot manually with film and prime lenses… and from the point of view of taking it on a long bike journey where size/weight and battery life are important considerations.

So.. what is like to use? Really nice is the short answer. The less short answer is that as a substitute for a film rangefinder it works brilliantly. The similar form factor with the 20mm lens and EVF means I can use it in exactly the same way – wandering around with it cradled discreetly in the palm of one hand down by my side with finger poised on the shutter release. I used it in this way with both auto and manual focus modes – the autofocus slows things down a little but it’s not cripplingly slow.. switching to manual focus I just set to ‘zone focus’ so I can photograph quickly. Program, shutter & aperture priority modes are available.. but I only ever used it in aperture priority simply because it’s the closest to the way I work with film.

Image quality with the lens mentioned here is very good… no problem with sharpness but what really surprised me was the excellent shadow detail and the almost luminous quality to some of the images… it’s a characteristic I had only ever associated with Leica and Zeiss prime lenses and while nothing IMHO will ever come close to matching that the little f1,7 lens and GF1 does a pretty good job.

As a camera for the touring cyclist it’s perfect – small, light, seems robust – I mean I failed to break it despite some solid efforts and it stood up just fine to thousands of Km of shaking on rough dirt tracks. The battery life is very good, Panasonic quote somewhere between 400-500 frames on a full charge depending on whether or not you use the LCD on the back or the EVF and how much flash you use. The battery retains it charge very well too, I didn’t bother with a spare battery – instead relying on being able to find somewhere to charge it every few days and had no problems at all.

The only critiscm really is the accessory viewfinder. It uses a tiny LCD which is limited in the quality of image it displays – i.e poor dynamic range and quite pixellated.. I got used to it and it serves its purpose well but on occasions that I was asked to take a pic using an SLR with optical viewfinder, having used nothing but the GF1 for a few weeks, the quality of the optical viewfinder image took my breath away. Can’t have it all  , after all it is a fraction of the size and weight of a digital SLR and image quality is virtually indistinguishable unless you’re thinking of really serious enlargements.

As a footnote plenty of other lenses are available for the camera and it can also use micro-4/3 lenses from other manufacturers (with some limitations on function).. most obviously those from Olympus for the EP1. There is even an adaptor for mounting Leica M-mount lenses which is a terrific idea.. I haven’t bought one though as the 20mm lens shown here suits my need perfectly 

If you want to see more nice cycle-touring pics taken with the GF1 check out Cass’s blog here.. he has a few lenses with him – not sure which but we both agree it’s a brilliant camera for the pedal-powered traveller.

I also took a Lumix LX3 as a back-up… but that is a whole other story ;-)

Hope Vision 1 Review….

The time has come the Walrus said, to talk of many things… of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings… and LED lights and stuff…. now Lewis Carroll wouldn’t have a had a clue about LED lighting but since it’s been a few days since I wrote something genuinely useful I thought I would give you a quick review of the Hope Vision 1 front light I’ve been using recently.

For the last few seasons I’ve been running a Light and Motion Solo Logic lamp with lithium-ion battery – it’s been brilliant and although only a halogen-based system it’s been plenty bright enough for pitch dark road training rides and some not-too-technical off-road excursions… it was fine.. until I started using it on my nice, clean-looking DeSalvo ti-fixie... being a bit of a bike tart that battery pack strapped to the top tube or under the saddle plus the cables just spoiled the nice clean lines of the bike (!) … and the cable rubbing on the top tube was polishing the brushed titanium in a particularly annoying fashion… so I sold it for £50 (the light, not the bike…). I’d like to be able to justify spending £300 on a 900-lumen retina destroying light.. mainly to get back at the motorists who refuse to dip their lights for  cyclist but right now my riding profile doesn’t justify it… all my night riding is on road and bridleways, albeit very dark, unlit ones.

The Hope Vision 1 appealed because it’s a self-contained unit, bit like the Exposure lights but rather than costing £300 I paid £79… for sure it’s a lot less bright, 240 lumens, and you need to supply a set of 4 rechargeable AA NiMH cells (big deal, I bought a set of Uniross 2700mAh ones for less than £7 on fleabay) but for that money I figured I’d take a chance on it being bright enough to ride at a decent lick down a dark, wet Cornish lane on a very dark night… (did I mention it gets dark round here, especially at night?) Turns out it is bright enough… which is lucky :o) The useful light output I would put at roughly equivalent to the Light & Motion somewhere between mid and high setting, so plenty really. The light is very white but still gives adequate penetration which is a critiscm I’ve often seen of LED systems. There are 4 power settings plus a flashing mode, I’ve been running on full power continuously as I live in a rural area with sparse street lighting but in town the lower setting would be fine from a visibility point of view. Run time is quoted at around 3hrs on full power and that’s what I’ve been getting with the 2700mAH cells… so no complaints there.

The quick release bar clamp is good… easy to use and well made, makes it easy to declutter my bars for the weekend. It’s sized for oversize (31.8mm) bars but comes with rubber inserts for fitting to standard road and MTB bars (26mm and 25.4mm respectively). It also comes with a helmet mount but I think, given the size of it to accommodate the cells, if I was looking for a specific helmet light I’d be more inclined to fork out for an Exposure Joystick.

Here’s a picture of it looking nice in that crisp-CNC’d way that Hope do so well… interestingly not on my fixie, which would be it’s ‘spiritual home’ (?!) but rather on my Nomad which has been doing commuting duty the last couple of days due to the need to lug my laptop and portfolio around.

So there you go, recommended if you’re looking for a good road light, and even if you’re not it’s still recommended ‘cos it comes with a lanyard and would make a suitably techy flashlight… and it’s British of course.. and comes in various colours…. except pink… or purple… which is a shame, lol :o)

http://www.hopegb.com

by the way, Hope aren’t giving me anything here…not that I wouldn’t turn ‘em down if they wanted to :o)

I was going to wrap this post up there but I’m on a bit of a roll so here’s a bit extra (see, told you I was good value rather than cheap :o)… my rear light. Seems appropriate to say a few words… for the last gawd knows how long I’ve been using various flavours of Cateye rear lights but I recently swapped to a Smart 1/2 Watt LED job, catalogue pic below… this thing really will take the skin off your eyeballs if you look right at it, it’s brilliant, literally! The flashing mode is a bit flowery but will get you noticed if that’s your thing…. and only 12 quid :o)

Ok that’s it for now, see ya!

DeSalvo Titanium Fixed Gear Review…

OK, so after introducing it to you gradually (part 1, part 2, part 3) and having ridden it 1500km since I took delivery of the frame I figured it was about time I wrote about it properly. I can’t write a review in the conventional sense because being a custom frame it’s unique, if you bought one it would be different to this one… but I can ramble on about what I wanted and whether or not I got it… By the way, the photos below are in black and white.. mainly because I like black and white, everyone know what colour titanium is anyway and it makes the dirt harder to spot… not to mention the weeds in the various locations I grabbed photos… read the rest here…..

Body Bag…

“ooh, there’s a lot of it about” seems to be the standard response in this country (probably for lack of anything more interesting than the weather, which is generally rubbish at the moment) to news that one isn’t feeling too well… the reality is there probably isn’t a lot of it about, no more than normal anyway else everyone I know would be coughing and spluttering right now. I’ve been laid low (sadly rather than just laid…) for a few days with a chest infection, no idea where it came from but being asthmatic often leaves me open to such episodes… so not having any actual riding to write about I thought talk a bit about my Body Bag… Or rather Ground Effect’s Body Bag bike bag… I bought this for my touring bike, the logic behind it being that airlines are getting increasingly tetchy about carrying baggage of any kind, let alone bikes – many now specify a purpose-made bike bag or box to fit within a given set of dimensions. It can also be hard to find packing materials at the end of a tour (assuming you had nowhere to store the packing the bike travelled out in) so I’d been looking for a bag that would fit my touring bike (with racks on) yet that I wouldn’t mind too much carrying with me on the bike…. The Body Bag is it, it packs down to the size of an A4 book in it’s own little stuffsac, weighs just over a kg yet is made of pretty tough cordura and it fits my Thorn Nomad with any issues at all. All I need is some scrap cardboard, an old blanket or whatever else is to hand to form some disposable padding for the bike. My camping gear is pretty damn light anyway so I figure I can justify the weight of this on tour to myself with thoughts such as it would make a good ground-sheet when bivying, or I can put the lower half of my sleeping bag inside for extra insulation if I need to… and so on. It occurred to me it would also very nicely fit a dead goat or deer for example if you were, say, in the business of collecting roadkill for your camp dinner….. well anyway… (and please that wasn’t an entirely serious suggestion) who knows… as I haven’t had a chance to use it since my Tunisia trip was postponed… lol. In the meantime though it’s pretty compact storage for my tourer anyway… pics below, shoe is there for size comparison (for the peculiarly anal reader it’s a size 44 ;o).

New camping stove.. Primus Omnifuel.. a review

*** an update to my words below now the stove has some serious miles on it. I used it almost continuously for roughly 8 months in the Andes. It survived many thousands of kilometres of bouncing around in my panniers on my bike on some very rough roads and never missed a beat. I like this stove more than my old Dragonfly. The construction feels more robust and the pump especially, being metal, I like very much. It is easily as controllable as the Dragonfly but is much quieter, the old Dragonfly sounded something like a 747 at take-off thrust. I ran it almost exclusively on unleaded petrol but using alcohol (cheap from pharmacies all over Latin America) for priming – this avoids the problems of soot clogging the jet. On occasion I also ran it on ‘benzina blanca’ – a more refined petroleum product sold for cleaning purposes.. but more expensive. I had a few spares with me but didn’t need them, the stove appears as good as the day it was new.. albeit somewhat grubbier. Highly recommended. ***

hey, continuing the theme of “I can’t wait for another adventure” I’ve got a new camping stove to show you. OK, not very exciting but I’ve been sick this week and unable to ride/race so I’ve had to find some sort of inspiration…. My previous expedition stove was an MSR Dragonfly multi-fuel stove – it burned pretty much any liquid fuel and did it well though I only ever ran it on white gas, unleaded petrol and on one occasion paraffin). It served me very well for 12 years until I sold it in Ecuador back in January. It wasn’t perfect – the pump design was compromised by a weak point (but fixed in later models) and at one point the burner became detached from the spindle/fuel pipe but MSR fitted a new one for free within a couple of days (after 8 years of use which says a lot for their customer service!). This week I replaced it with a Primus Omnifuel.. the successor to the Himalaya Multifuel.. this thing really does burn anything – liquid fuel as well as gas cartridges which is pretty handy. It comes with 3 different jets and a tool to swap them around depending on fuel type. I’ve only given it a test firing so far on white gas but I’m really impressed… dead easy to light and appears to be very powerful. I’ve no idea what the official heat output figures are, don’t really care – it looks ‘right’ The build quality is nice, it feels a much less fragile design than the Dragonfly and the best bit is that the pump is metal rather than plastic so should be nice and reliable on a long journey….. also handy is that the fuel bottle fitting is common with MSR bottles as I have a couple of those in different sizes kicking around here already.

I’ll report back as soon as it gets some solid outdoor use but based on the reviews I’ve seen I doubt I’ll be disappointed. Worth considering if you are in the market for a stove for overseas adventures… Here’s a pic of mine…

which is a bit of a shit pic so here’s a ‘library’ photo as well… ;o)

Mine came from Outback Trading in Helston (top folk.. heck, they’re friends of mine so free plug is very much in order ;o) and came with fuel bottle, tools, solid feeling storage bags and a windshield.