Sounds like you are on the right track, rict. Hang in there! I understand your reluctance to spend more money when there are so many variables to consider. You sound much like I felt early on. For me loaners and gifts were my first hammocks, then a cheapy hammock I bought because I felt I alter it to learn about different variables helped me grow in understanding. I learned I could get comfortable but it was over a year until I was ready to pay enough for a really nice ready made camping hammock and tarp.

Yes, there are some things you can know right away when you lay in a hammock. But other things reveal themselves only with longer time in a specific hammock or after you have experienced enough different hammocks to sort the causes and effects. Some things just get easier to notice once you sort out familiarity with ten other things first.

Folks here are keen to help you find a solution because they know the comfort that is most likely possible for you is so worth the search, and maybe is possible with what you already have.

But no one has the one right answer for you and you will have to research until you get it right. Right now comfort is the priority for you. And I suspect there may be several comfortable hammocks that will work for you. I bid you courage enough to keep up the search long enough to learn the basics of hanging any hammock at its maximum comfort setting for you, then to sort out your priorities about the other details. I'm not saying it is necessarily easy.

Although I owned and loved hammocks for relaxing in at an early age, I was slow to take hammocking seriously for my senior years of camping with bad knees, back and neck pain, arthritis, and aging "plumbing." I am now eternally grateful to Shadowmoss for her persistence in trying to steer me to hammock forums and hangouts and a new way to think about sleeping. I thought she just wanted a hammocking companion when she actually wanted to gift me with comfortable camping. The voices I hear now urging you on remind me fondly of her campaign to keep me searching.

After I saw the light, I began to read the HF for days on end. But things were not so illuminated when I was trying to get comfortable in my first hammock! I had to go back and reread many times! IMHO, dialing in was NOT as easy for me as others make it sound. Some days things made sense. Other days nothing made sense.

My learning curve had huge flat spots and lurches. I was a slow and clumsy and sometimes too overwhelmed to try again for weeks. Several experienced hangers patiently helped me. Sometimes I had to stop efforting and make do with what I had for the time being until the light came on for me again about what to tweak next.

Trying to find the right sag during my early experimentations with other variables like gathered/whipped/soft or tight sides, etc, frustrated me until I realized I had a huge misunderstanding about ridgelines. An adjustable hammock ridgeline that helps determine how to hang the hammock with consistent sag each time can and often is different than a structural ridgeline that is part of the hammock suspension or the ridge line for hanging a tarp. Now my experimentation went better. Duh!

Next I realized the cheapie hammock was waaaay long for the stand I was using indoors. I zip tied it up much shorter and the right sag and hanging height became possible; sweet spots began to appear on demand!

Eventually, my experimenting with a $16 cheap hammock and homemade stand convinced me hammocks could provide more comfortable sleep all night 24/7 than I had known in beds in many years. That was transforming! This was now about my everyday health; I was more willing to spend money for good gear, even if I never went camping with it! I was happy I could look forward to sleeping anywhere! So maybe I really could camp happily for many more years.

At one point, I thought I was convinced that as soon as I could afford it I would buy a Blackbird. I spent a leisurely afternoon reading in a loaner Blackbird and was surprised to discover I wasn't totally happy with it. I was primed to understand why, but I didn't KNOW what the reason was at the time. Later, at a Hot Springs hangout, I lay in a Switchback prototype for only a few minutes. It was comfortable but not more so than others I'd been in. I liked the zipper system and the "switch" capability it offered. More importantly, I LOVED the view from that hammock. I hadn't known that was even a consideration in my list of wants! I had learned that comfort was possible in several brands of hammocks, but the details in relation to our priorities is what really makes us LOVE a hammock. The Switchback does not meet all my criteria, but it meets the most important ones for me now. I still want to try many different hammocks. I fantasize about trying a Grizz bridge and there may be a Warbonnet hammock in my future yet; many of the DIY hammocks make me swoon. But most importantly, I know I can be comfortable camping outdoors again and that is marvelous. I may drive an 18 year old car contentedly, but I want to test drive the newest thing out on the hammock scene!

Good luck on your quest to find comfort. Keep asking questions, and take full advantage of the offers of help that you can. Lots of us have pay backs to work off!

Turtlelady