Originally Posted by
jefnvk
The way mine is sized, I can carry the poles in their bag either strapped under the top tube or the downtube, and stuff the tent body in a stuff sack in a pannier or on the back rack much more compactly. The bag containing it all is too bulky to strap to either of those places, and hangs a ways off the back of the rack. I'm left with either strapping it to the rack and letting it hang off (and not leaving much room to strap much else solid on the top), or separating the tent and the poles and stashing separately.
I understand your logic though, like I said my older tent came with a much "better" sized bag, that I wouldn't consider any of that, and would just strap down and be done with. Just a difference in how the tents were packed from the factory.
Although, I had never considered this manner of carrying, I may have to give that a try! Thanks for sharing!
I'm not sure what tents you guys are using but I've owned several different tents from several different manufacturers and never had one that the bag was way oversized compared to the tent. In most cases, the stuff sack for the tent is almost too small, requiring careful rolling of the tent to ensure that it will fit in the bag.
I will say that I'm careful about choosing a tent with the shortest poles I can get away with. One of the reasons I've never owned a dome tent is that the poles were always longer (21" packed size) than A-framed tents (18" to 19" packed size. The tents I've owned have always sat on the rear deck perpendicular to the rack and about the same width as the panniers or even slightly narrower.
I have looked at putting the tent on the rack longitudinally but never like how it carried. I couldn't imagine trying to carry it under the top tube nor the down tube. Both of those places are already taken with a water bottle and a pump.