After ummmming and arrrrrring for a year over the black wolf and OZTENT RV series, tents I had finally decided to buy an RV-5.
So with new years weekend coming up a quick phone call “
yea mate got em in stock” and a trip to the local big name camping
shop I left angry and empty handed after being told “na mate the computers wrong, says we have em but there not here and I don’t know when we getten em again” Left me re-evaluating the situation.
I had decided not to purchase the Black Wolf months ago purely on personal preference, at the end of the day if I’m going to spend a chunk of money on a tent I want to be comfortable with it.
I liked the RV-5 for the setup time, Built in awning, zip in peaked side panels with front and a friend of
mine also has an RV-5 meaning with the connector kit we could set up a nice
little camp.
But as luck would have it I wasn’t going to have one in a hurry unless I elected for an 8 hour drive or ordering over the
net (again personal preference call me impatient)
I had noticed they had the Jet tent but just assumed it was a carbon copy of the Black Wolf however I decided to take another look, with all of the features I liked of the RV-5 plus more room all round but at the cost slower setup / pack up time I started weighing up the benefit of Jet tent F30 & F30X against OZTENT RV-5.
We all know the up sides of the RV series of tents that have been around for about 15 years now, despite a few minor hiccups here and there they are at the end of the day a solid tent that works
well for their designed purpose.
As for the Jet Tents there just isn’t any reviews on them yet so once I started looking into it all the right boxes started getting ticked. It has more head & shoulder space and in the 30 series more floor space ( for a just over 6 foot guy that’s a good thing) It still has the same style zip in side and front panel and comes with a
fly in the bag. However it is a slower setup and pack up time and with the lack of info about them I really had no idea how much slower it was going to be and they are more expensive.
Looking at the photos on the jet tent web site it seemed I could still hook up to my friends RV-5 with the connector kit and the front add-ons looked very similar so all in all it fit what I wanted with more room inside.
On a trip into town and back to the same store we had look at what was in stock with the Jet Tents and decided to pick up the F30 with peaked side panels, a quick chat to the manager and he gave us a 10% discount for the run around with the lack of stock on the RV-5 bring it somewhat in line with the price of the OZTENT.
First impressions
I got it
home just as the heavens opened up and the rain started so in the garage we go. A quick flick through the destruction manual and I’m good to go, in 25 mins I had put it up, put the
fly on had a look around, taken the
fly off and packed it all up into the bag. So it is quick and I can say it seems to be built
well but you do really need to peg this tent out so without doing that I couldn’t get the floor or walls pulled tight and the front awning setup erected.
Fingers crossed the weather is fine enough over the next few days and I can get it all up and have a look and take some photos however the weather bureau isn’t getting my hopes up so watch this space ....
Appsy