Trailstar with Pitchlocs

[Avatar]

Recently I have been pondering the mysteries of the Tarptent Stratospire designs.

I was struck with a veritable thunderbolt when I realised the result could be arrived at by starting with the idea of making a 2-pole version of the MLD Trailstar.

Draw 2 overlapping hexagons showing the 10 equilateral triangle sections.
Remove 2 triangles at opposite ends and draw the remaining 8 sections together to form a 3D shape. (This is where the zips go too.)
Scale the whole thing, add pitchloc corners on the 2 main roof panels and make a few dimension changes and that's it.

So moving around in the circle of thought, has anyone built a Trailstar with pitchloc corners?
Would address the issues of large footprint and unusable space near the edges (at the expense of wind resistance)
The result might be expressed as a mini-techno-yurt (?!)
Would be a really cool shelter to see.

Last edited by Avatar on Fri 08 Nov, 2013 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Strider]

What's wrong with the SS?

[Avatar]

The Stratospire 1 and 2 are awesome designs.
To date I have only used it once so I can't give a long term review just yet.
The only quibble I have with Tarptents is I would prefer a heavier floor.

Since my recent purchase I have been trying to understand the fantastic geometric panel design.
You have to see one, walk around it, live in it to understand the interest I have in it I suppose.

When I realised there was an amazingly elegant derivation from extending the simple concept used to make the Trailstar
(which is to take a hexagon based on 7' equilateral triangle sections, remove one panel then join the remaining 5 up)
the idea came to apply pitchloc corners to the Trailstar. I am imagining something that looks like a mini yurt in form.

I emailed the idea to Ron Bell and the gist of his reply is that the great virtue of the Trailstar is its superb wind resistance
and any changes would affect that.

I don't disagree with that, but I would still like to see one prototyped up.
I still think it could be an amazing shelter.
Sure there may be a lot of issues like condensation and wind resistance but you have to build one to find out.

[icefest]

I cannot see much advantage of the pitchloc corners over the current bigstar.
The bigstar would be lighter and more wind resistant, i suspect more versatile too.