French Army F1 2 man pup tent.

Hi Campers,

I recently purchased a new camp tent. Why you ask. My old tent was a Ozark trails 2 man tent I purchased at Walmart. Great little tent, however I recently managed to put a hole in it. Repairing it would just need to use some Duct tape. (Cut a piece for both, inside and out.) Not sure if this would keep the wet out, or for how long.

Fortunately I recently watched a review on YouTube from one of my favorite channels. The Prepared Wanderer. Excellent channel that I have used as a reference for equipment and tips regularly. He reviewed a tent that really could my attention. It had some great extras associated with it, and so I looked a bit more into it and found one that met my budget. (Amazon). $55.00 I felt was a worth while investment for what I believed to be a great addition to my camping equipment. So dusted of my bank card and splurged. I purchased the French Army, F1 2 man Pup tent. (Military Surplus).

A week later it arrived and I dived into check it out. Well Money very well spent. Here’s the why and why not’s of the tent.

Why not’s first.

1. When I got it out of the packaging the bag it came in was bigger than I hoped.
2. It weighed a ton.
3. On opening the bag The extras bag ( pegs tie downs etc.) was extremely heavy. Probably half the total weight. The pegs were a very large, very strong steel. And there was a lot of them. 16 in total I believe. Extremely heavy.
4. The tie ropes are made of a thin Strong rope. (Like mini 550 cord). There are 6 in total I believe. These will work fine however  but the color (Army green) made them hard to see. I have bad eye sight and I know Ill trip over them.

After this initial impression I sat down and looked to see if I could fix  these 4 issues.

1. The Size of the bag turned out to be a quick fix. When it is packed from the manufacturer. The tent is rolled up. In such a way that it was long. I found that stuffing the tent instead of rolling it up, reduced the length about 4 to 5 inches. Taking care of the size problem. It was just too long to attach to the bottom of my Medium Alice Pack. Now it is only slightly wider than Pack.
2. The weight issue as I said was mainly the very sturdy pegs that were supplied with it. I replaced these ( most of them 12 to be exact) with the aluminum style tent pegs I used on my old tent.  I got these from Walmart and they cost about a $1 each. The weight saving is magnificent. however they are not perfect for the pegging down of the floor of the tent so I kept 4 of the original steel pegs. to peg the 4 corners of the floor.
3. See 2…LOL
4. To minimize the issue of tripping over the well camouflaged tie ropes supplied, I bought some high visibility 550 cordage. It has a reflective strand woven into it and is a safety orange color. Inexpensive and the rating was 150 lbs. . More than enough to tie down the tent.

Viola… it now is perfect for me . Well as perfect as I can get it right now.

Here are some more plus features I found when I rushed out back and put it up for the first time.

1. Quick and easy to put up. Took about 7 minutes
2. Made of very sturdy water proof material
3. Built in fly
4. Built in floor
5. Excellent ventilation.
6. Roomy. Later than I supposed.

So campers am I happy with my new purchase. Very so far although I have not put it to the actual camp test….YET. Winter has arrived in Minnesota. Its getting chilly, but I still would like to test it out. Just have to plan the trip carefully. Don’t want to find myself in a bad situation in the middle of a snow blizzard.

Stay tuned for a follow up post on the French 2 man pup tent. Or if your inkling takes you click on the link to see my YouTube video of the first set up and review I did.

Until next time. Remember Knowledge is a survival skill. Of course modifying things to suit your needs is a must.

Stay warm out there

The Novice Survivalist