OZ tent RV-3

OK, okay, I'm getting old, most of us will. I am tired of crawling in and out of a ground tent on my knees. The roof top tent required too much climbing up and down for set up and takedown. So I bought an OZ tent RV-3 with some of the money from the sale of my 1960 Land Rover 88.

    I found a good deal at Family Tent Camping, located in the US. https://familytentcamping.com/  It would save me shipping charges from Aus if I could have found someone who would sell and ship to the States.

   It came and there was some damage to the cardboard from shipping so I took pics and was careful to document the unpacking. Lucky for me it seemed only the box took any damage. You can see in the pic there is a slice in the right hand corner about a foot in from the end.

After unpacking I set it up to see how long a "30 second" tent would take. I have to admit it was fast to get the tent part up and I learned some things along the way.

Now I had watched videos so I had a pretty good idea how to do it.

Here's my tips;
      1)once out of the bag stake the rear of the tent down first
            this prevent the rear from moving around and lifting off the ground when you pull the front up.

     2)next stake down the front corners
            this will keep the base of the tent from squirming around as you set up the awning part and opening the doors.

     3)Not mentioned in any of the videos I watched, the instructions state that the tent needs to be wet down 3 times in order for the threads to swell and fill the gaps around the needle holes caused by sewing.

    Timing can be everything...My tent came on a Tuesday, I wet it down that night with a garden hose. On Thursday we started to get rain and over the next 4 days got 2" worth. My RV-3 didn't leak.
     It took 2 days to really dry out so I could put it away. in the meantime the spiders decided it would make a good habitat. They had a long wet winter too and I killed around 8 of them putting it away, while the banana slugs were enjoying the damp sunless underneath.
    No bugs got inside though. I am looking forward to using the OZtent when on the road if I figure I am going to hunker down somewhere for a bit.

On the con side, I'm 5'10", inside the tent I can stand upright next to the door. The rear of the tent is 4'8". Looking at the floor space it appears 3 adults would be cramped to sleep in it. Like most tents it can be done, but a couple really needs a 3 man tent and a solo person a 2.

Set up video;

Cringe....