Let's play tents....

...while it's not raining. Having extracted the rooftent from under a pile of garden toolery, we remembered that there were some small jobs that needed to be done before we could put it back "up top". The two main ones were a repair to the side skirt and some means of fastening the waterproof transit cover since the completely useless zip broke within minutes of first use.

The skirt repair was fairly simple but the cover needed some thought. The zip fastener, even if it hadn't broken, was far too difficult to use. Given the two corners the zip had to pass around, that it's 2 metres off the ground and couldn't be done without lying horizontal across the (wet/dusty) roofrack for at least one side made it completely impractical. We'd held it on with bungee straps but we needed a better system. A search of the scrap box turned up some webbing, buckles and straps from an old tent. These we stitched to the cover at points around the edge...

The sail stitcher did a good job, but the material plus webbing was pretty tough to push through and I managed to break a needle and stab myself several times. OK, so the bloodstains are a bit overdone, but it really was a bugger of a job. Despite bringing the cover indoors for several hours to warm it up and hopefully make it a bit more supple, handling it was still much like trying to gift wrap a football with a sheet of hardboard.

 Now it fits and the edges can be pulled tight enough to stop water getting under the cover and wetting the tent.

The next thing was to get it into place.

As my old Science teacher would say, a "suitable system of planes, pulleys and levers" was set up and the task of getting a 55kg dead weight from ground to roof was a one-man job.

We'll leave the mattress indoors for the moment, in case the weather takes a turn for....

...the worse. This was Sunday morning, so glad we got it done the day before. I waited until things got a bit warmer before fighting with the awning, but this went back on fairly easily once I'd got the brackets and bolts lined up.

This is a great bit of gear. It unfolds like a giant bat wing and shades the side and back, over the table and back door. The legs that support it also support our custom made windbreak, so we can seal ourselves in from the weather.

Other odd jobs done: cable for the CB re-routed and the ground plane fixed to the roof, kitchen storage cleaned out and the GPS refitted to the co-pilot's seat.

Next week I need to put a guard around the rear worklight switch, so the chef can't turn it on accidentally and not notice for 15 hours......good job it's an LED.