First hanging

Finally, a summer like day in the beginning of May, an ideal evening for my first hammock setup.

I read all the forums, saw all the videos and practiced my knots. I was ready for my first hang. I thought… Well it wasn’t that bad. 

I used the "out of the box" DD Frontline Hammock and DD Tarp XL without any custom enhancements.

 

Let me take you through it in images.

A good tension at a sitting height.

Comfortable chair :-)

Now with me in it. Comfy when I got the tension right. It is more space between the hammock and the ground than it looks like.

Then it was time for the tarp. yes you are supposed to do it the other way around, but I was keen on testing the hammock! The tarp is a DD Tarp XL 4.5 by 3 meters. It's HUGE! My first mistake unveiled itself. Not enough space between the trees...

New trees wider apart. yes the tarp fits, but the webbing could not reach the full length with the default setup. I had to make my first modification. I tied a small loop on one side of the hammock allowing the webbing to get twice as long but as a single cord. This gave me problems later on.

The DD Tarp XL in all it's glory! Tension in the corners only. But pretty good I think!

Now with me in the hammock. As you can see the webbing gave way to much slack. Especially on the side with the single line webbing (to the left in the picture).

I put some more tension on it and got a better height on it. But it didn't feel safe nor comfortable. I did not get the tension I wanted and the angles were off. I think it is possible to use the default webbing setup with two lines of webbing to the tree if you find two trees, not too thick and 4.6 meters apart. But it might be the case that the webbing stretches too much too use with these distances between the trees.