Heimplanet's new tent is a two person Wedge with external, inflatable air-beam structure...
We found this skulking in one of the external courtyards at the recent OutDoor show in Germany, it's called The Wedge and it's the latest design from Heimplanet, the guys who brought you The Cave, a weirdly impressive geodesic tent with an inflatable exo-skeleton that blows up from a single inflation point.
The difference with The Wedge is that at 3.2kg for a two-person tent, it's just about on the edge of being backpackable. Not light certainly, but not insanely heavy either when split two ways. In contrast, the Cave weighs more than 5kg.
Like big brother it inflates all as one from a single point with isolation valves to shut off the different beams so a puncture in one doesn't mean all-round catastrophic failure. The struts are double-layer too, for added robustness.
The tent itself is, well, wedge shaped and has a lightweight inner along with the externally supported fly-sheet and the whole caboodle pitches together for rapid erection, ahem... The fly is made from 100% Nylone with a silicone coating on one side and a PU layer on the other, while the Airframe - three parts - uses an outer layer of stiffened polyester and an inner layer of thermoplastic polyurethane.
We know of three brands using air beams. One is Vango, which uses the technology mostly for larger and heavier tents, the second is Nemo, which focuses on bivvy tents and the third is Heimplanet, which currently has the Cave. But if The Wedge does go into production for 2013, it should be the closest to a backpackable, spacious, air-beam tent out there.
More Heimplanetism at www.heimplanet.com.
