Morning runs are fine times to think about hammock geometry.
Forgive me for belaboring what is obvious to the old hands. I'm still playing catch-up.
I imagine a hammock as pictured below.
I'm the fat line off-center in the middle. I'm lying an a dashed diagonal line. The flatness of my lay depends on the vertical distance between my centerpoint c, and the highest point, which will be one of the endpoints. That distance depends on a number of things. First, on the length of the fabric along the dashed line. For a given degree of being off-center, that is fixed. Second, the depth to which c can go depends on the distance between a and e, and my weight. That's also fixed, if using a structural ridgeline, and I lay off the evening snacks. Third, the flatness depends on the vertical distance between the hammock endpoints and the endpoints of my line of tension, e.g., between a and b. That distance is affected by the distance between a and e also, by the length of fabric from b to d, and by my weight. Finally, the flatness is affected by the vertical distance between my tension endpoints (e.g., b and d) and the endpoints of my body.
So it seems to me that if a body side guyline is going to affect my lay along this axis, it's only option is to
pull the height of b and d down. Furthermore, it is not enough to just lower the height of b and d. By doing that you need also to lower the height of my feet and head.
The shockcord used on my tieouts is pretty thin, and doesn't exert much force. For it to exert more downward force on points b and d to lower my head and feet than do the weight of these appendages----I'm not seeing it. Might work if I used real guyline cord, but I'm not sure that the guyline tab on the body is engineered for that kind of tug.
I can see though that a flatter lay could be created as compared with this if more fabric is introduced along the tension axis, as might be done when the hammock is cut and wrapped.
Grizz
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