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Lightweight Tent - STATION13 - SHIELD
1 Person - 3/4 Season - Lightweight Backpacking Tent - Just 1.65kg!
The SHIELD is our new lightweight one person tent aimed primarily at solo backpackers who require a lightweight and practical 3/4 season tent but also want to keep the weight of their packs down to a minimum.
Key Features:- Just 1.65kg in weight
- Very fast to erect
- Erects as one (with inner pre-attached)
- Decent size vestibule
- Deceptively spacious interior
- Anodised 7001-T6 aluminium alloy, 8.5mm shock-corded tent poles
- Pack size: 45cm x 14cm
The weights break down as follows:- Flysheet: 625 grams
- Inner tent: 526 grams
- Aluminium alloy tent poles (x 2): 275 grams
- Lightweight (10g each) Alloy V-pegs (x 16): 160 grams
- Guylines (x 8): 32 grams
- Tent bag, peg bag, pole bag: 37 grams
Total weight: 1655 grams
Please Note: The 183cm x 57cm Z-pad shown in the photos of the tent is not included, but is for illustration purposes only.
At just under 1.65kg, the SHIELD is a very nice 3/4 season, competitively priced, lightweight tent.
Our new SHIELD tent is an uprated version of our 2/3 season Whisper tent. The simple functionality and practicality of our Whisper tent has made it a very popular 2/3 season tent, but it is not particularly suited to UK winter months. With this in mind, rather than design a completely new tent, we decided to simply uprate the Whisper to give us the SHIELD.
SHIELD Materials:
- Flysheet: UV protected, PU-coated ripstop 210T polyester with a 6500mm Hydrostatic Head (Our Whisper has 3000mm HH)
- Inner Tent: Breathable full polyester with small mesh area (Whisper is full no-see-um bug mesh)
- Floor: PU-coated ripstop 210T polyester with a 6500mm Hydrostatic Head (Whisper has 190T polyester 3000mm HH)
- Tent Poles: 8.5mm shock-corded, pre-curved anodised 7001-T6 aluminium alloy (Whisper has 7.9mm poles)
- Extended floor into vestibule area (Whisper does not have this)
- Eight guylines and eight guyline fixing points (Whisper has four guylines and four guyline fixing points)
- Smaller screened foot end vent (Whisper has a larger open foot end vent)
- 16 Aluminium alloy V-section tent pegs (Whisper has 12 pegs)
So, all in all, our SHIELD tent is considerably more weatherproof, more stable in windy conditions and indeed provides a warmer environment than our Whisper. And hence our SHIELD tent is generally far more suitable for use in inclement weather conditions.
Of course, the uprated materials do come at some cost to weight.
- SHIELD packed weight: 1655 grams (Whisper packed weight: 1376 grams)
- SHIELD tent packed size: 45cm x 14cm (Whisper tent packed size: 41cm x 13cm)
As with our Whisper tent we wanted another lightweight solo tent to complement our existing one and two person tents, but in the SHIELD we also wanted a tent that could handle 3/4 season camping. Again, we have done our best to strike the most suitable balance between weight, size, comfort and price, but as with any lightweight tent, there has to be compromises, so striking the right balance is actually quite challenging.
PLEASE NOTE: Our SHIELD tent is available with an additional footprint to provide added protection to the sewn-in bathtub groundsheet, if and when required. The footprint is a PU-coated polyester with a Hydrostatic Head of 5000mm and weighs in at 160 grams - choose with or without the optional footprint when buying. While the footprint may not seem to offer any additional waterproof protection to a floor that already has a HH of 6500mm, it will certainly provide additional protection from potential damage, wear and tear.
The colour of our SHIELD tent may also be preferable to many than that of our Whisper tent.
- SHIELD tent colour: Forest Green (Whisper tent colour: Light Grey)
The forest green of our SHIELD's flysheet make it far more practical for wild and stealth camping
Manufactured from aviation grade 7001-T6 aluminium alloy, two pre-curved 8.5mm, shock-corded poles keep the design clean and simple, but extremely functional. As with our Whisper tent, the SHIELD is intentionally a minimalist 'no-frills' tent, and nothing about the tent is over-designed, over-complicated or particularly fiddly, meaning that erecting the tent is fast and very straight forward.
Floor space inside the SHIELD is extremely good for such a small, lightweight one person tent. Internally the length is 210cm, the width at both the foot end and at the head end is 80cm. Partway down the length from the head end it widens out to a respectable 100cm, so it is actually a fairly decent space for one person. With an internal height of 90cm at its highest point, the SHIELD is comparable or better than many other similar tents in this category. There is also a very decent size vestibule for your pack and/or wet clothing or dirty boots.
Another thing that sets the SHIELD (and our Whisper) apart from our other solo tents is the fact that it can be erected as one. That is, with the inner tent pre-attached with toggle clips to corresponding loops on the inside of the flysheet, the tent will erect all in one. None of our other tents have this feature - they all require the inner tent to be erected first. The only downside to this feature is that it is not possible to use just the bug mesh inner tent by itself (not that this is likely to be an issue in the UK), and on a positive note, with the inner left pre-attached, the tent can be erected in just a few short minutes, and without the inside of the tent getting soaking wet if it’s raining.
Again, like our Whisper, and in order to minimise weight, our SHIELD only employs one zippered entrance on the side of the tent, but with such a little one man tent we don’t see this as being any kind of major issue. The full polyester inner tent entrance features a two-way zipper, so it can be opened from the top or the bottom.
We appreciate that individuals may have differing opinions, but on a tent of this size we always prefer a side entrance to an end entrance, as it does tend to make getting in and out of the tent a little easier.
Ventilation is provided by a rectangular mesh vent at the foot end of the flysheet, and a triangular mesh vent, high at the head end. And of course the outer flysheet entrance can be fully opened and clipped up to increase ventilation on any very warm, rain-free nights.
As far as the Hydrostatic Head (HH) goes, the flysheet is UV protected, 210T PU-coated ripstop polyester with a 6500mm HH as is the inner tent floor. In line with our other tents, our SHIELD tent's seams are double-stitched and tape sealed.
As with our Whisper, our SHIELD tent is not free-standing - that is, it requires pegging out to remain upright, so would not be suitable for pitching on rocky terrain... the ground needs to take the tent pegs. With its relatively low profile, uprated specifications and with all the guylines pegged out, the SHIELD stands up to rain and windier weather much better than higher sided tents.
This SHIELD tent comes as standard with 16 x V-section aluminium alloy tent pegs (same as Hillebergs) that weigh just 10g each, along with eight hi-vis guylines with Line-Lok tensioners. However, we also have the SHIELD tent available with our Superlite titanium hook tent pegs that weigh just 5g each and so provide an overall weight-saving of 80g. This in turn brings the total packed tent weight down to just under 1.6kg. If you would prefer the SHIELD tent with our Superlite titanium hook tent pegs, then please see our other listings or visit our eBay shop.