Eyes and Ears

For the person on the White Blaze forum who asked the question, "I wonder if NEMO reads these posts?":

First of all, thank you for capitalizing NEMO. Second, yes, we do read a lot of these forums. Google alerts are amazing for that sort of thing. We like to get customer's and pre-customer's honest opinions, and forums are a great place to see what people think when there aren't any repercussions for what they say.

As hard as it is, I also always refrain from adding to the conversations because this usually leads to trouble.

While most of the comments were overwhelmingly positive, there were still questions and concerns raised. So, I'm taking this opportunity to reply to some of the questions posed:

1. Zipper flap vents - Don't knock 'em before you try 'em. As ChinMusic mentioned, they are waterproof when open in everything but hard driving sideways rain. In that situation, like all vents, close them up (you don't even need to go outside to do this) and use the natural ventilation of the high cut fly and vestibules. Please believe NEMO has done extensive testing on these vents.

2. Velcro wraps - because of the pole configuration and the way the fly pulls down over both sides of the pole, there is very little if any need for velcro wraps. They aren't needed to keep the fly in place during an "On the Fly" setup, go ahead and try it. The pole can't shift if you have it tensioned properly. And velcro plus the welded fabric it takes to keep the fly waterproof is heavier than you think. In this case it wasn't needed, so we didn't add it and saved the weight.

3. Jake's Feet - which, as someone pointed out are named after our good friend Jake Lah, always seem to be a contentious point in tent design. We love them because they have so many benefits over the traditional grommet anchor. As far as breaking, we have literally never had any customer complain about a broken Jake's Foot. Ever. They are bomber. This is why an extra one isn't included with your tent. However, we have heard of people losing them, which is why we do sell them on the spare parts section of our website. The counter point to Jake's Feet is usually that they are difficult to use. I promise you if you spend 30 seconds when you first get your tent to figure them out, you'll never go back. Its like swype for your phone. Check out previous posts about Jake's Feet if you aren't buying that they are easy to use.

4. Floor dimensions - Published stats on our website are based on measuring actual production tents. There is no fudging. And I can assure you that all of the floors are the same size since they are cut by a mechanical process. However, there are several things that can affect this measurement. The primary factors are how tightly you stake the tent out, and humidity. The first is obvious, but it might not be so obvious that fabric stretches a considerable amount according to humidity. If you are measuring in a cold dry place, the tent will appear smaller than if you measure in a warm humid environment.

5. Head guyout - From our testing, flapping is mitigated by attaching the inner tent to the fly using the guyout over the head and guying it out. As with many of the other comments, we'd love to hear to hear them after you actually try using the tent:) I also suggest attaching the sides of the tent to the fly in a similar way to volumize the tent. It makes a big difference in comfort.

For those of you who were not part of this forum, and are interested, you can check it out here. For anyone who wants direct answers, calling or emailing customer service is probably your best bet. But don't stop writing in the forums. We love the feedback.

-Suzanne