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Sunrise over the Big Red Bash 2015

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New Camping Gear - Not what I was expecting.

Our mates at Powerful 4x4, with their Kalahari Branded camping gear, told me that we were getting their top of the range 'Black Edition' awning for our Mazda BT50. I wasn't really sure what the deal with the Black Edition was all about, other than the colour.

When they also suggested that the awning tent was worth a look, and their new model double swag, (I've been having swag problems...) we were very pleased to see three big boxes land on our doorstep THE NEXT DAY!
It took us a few weeks to get around to unpacking but here's what we found.




The awning, the fabric seems heavier than some of the others on the market but the stand out difference is the twin channels for the poles on both the mounting board and the drop down leg section.. That's actually pretty useful, especially if packing up on your own, you will be able to just retract the legs so that they come down to the less than 2m awning width, rather than having to retract all the way. In the wind, on your own - that could be significant. The double channel also makes for a stiffer end board.

Need a bigger yard.

Velcro anti-flap flaps are spaced along each side. I'll be adding an LED strip into each headboard I think. We had it fitted to our Rhino Roof Racks in no time, thankfully we had a stash of uni-strut nuts and bolts in the toolkit. We need to acknowledge that the brackets could be better - at least for the service that the awning will see in our line of work. The brackets are probably fine for many users and I guess that it would be impossible to supply brackets for every possible mounting option..

Acces to the car is available from inside.

Next we turned our attention to the big box labeled as the awning tent - I was a bit concerned about the practicality of the tent judging by the size of the box... thankfully the box was quite generous and even included the surprise gift that we had been told to look out for.

Chris just came around to borrow the Side by Side to go shooting.

We unrolled the tent, took a moment to orient ourselves with the doors and sailtracks, and set to fitting it. We were immediately impressed with the quality of the fabric. Of late, ripstop has been associated with really light weight materials - there's not necessarily anything wrong with lightweight ripstop, but it is nice to see a heavier material. The floor is a heavy duty, zipped in PVC with a couple of tie down options in each corner. There are big doors on two sides (making access to the car possible) and big windows on the other two.

What a great idea.

"I think we've been very helpful."

Packing away took just a couple of minutes, there is a bit of a trick to arranging the window flaps, but that's not difficult to work out and the whole thing rolls up back into it's bag with plenty of room to spare.

Massive door.

We then moved to the final Kalahari box - the largest, and began to work on the swag. The mattress is huge! There were moments of doubt that it would actually fit in the swag. The swag could be considered free standing, but anything that size is going to need to at least have the base pegged out tight to maintain integrity in the wet. The access door is huge and there are internally adjustable windows at each end. The swag is very roomy and most people could easily sit up inside of it.

 

Not quite free standing.

Heaps of room to sit up inside.

 Obviously the proof of the mattress comfort is in the sleeping - there was no opportunity to do that today, but there will be next weekend - report to follow.

Rolled up swag (left) and awning tent (right).

Rolling the swag up is definitely a two person job but the sturdy buckles and clips do offer confidence with pulling it down tight. There is no 'swag bag' (which is unusual in the market nowadays), but the heavy PVC base will offer good protection for roof-rack and ute tray loading.