My son loves his HH Scout. Its the older version with the bottom entry. He has tried a few of my other hammocks and decided he likes the side entry / zipper style. So I read several posts on here about HH zipper modes and decided to dive in and give it a try.
I cut the hammock body from the insect net right against the existing bias tape, leaving the bias tape attached to the insect screen. To prevent fraying of the hammock body fabric I seared both edges of the cut carefully w/ a lighter. I then made my own bias tape to finish off the hammock body out of Charcoal colored, coated ripstop I had on hand. Special thanks to CreativeKayt for her diy bias tape video! From there it was easy as attaching the zipper between the netting and the body...
I also desided to switch out the original rigging. Below are pics of the original BIG rope connection at the body and pics of the switch to amsteel. I decided against Whoopie slings. Instead I went with fixed loops of amsteel that started as 60" pieces before my splicing. I then threaded the doubled over loop through the holes in the whipping and around itself in a constricting wrap before finishing w/ a larks head. I'm "knot' sure (pun intended) if this is how others have done theirs but it seems bullet proof and secure. Afterwards I slipped back on the HH suspension covers and zip locked them on. The other end of the fixed loops have cinch buckles from onrope1. I also went ahead and switch the lighter HH ridgeline for one of 7/64" amsteel 101" long. Oh and I burned a hole in the stuff sack and ran a zigzag around the fabric edges to make a Blackbishops Bag out of the original HH sack (you can see the hole in the 3rd pic below)
Last and not least - although not a mod, I made a 3 layer thick 2/3 length IX UQ (made according to Scott Littlefields sticky instructions) and covered it in 1.1 oz camo. The 2/3 length makes this an almost full length UQ for my 12 yr old though.
In short he should be very happy between the zipper and the UQ (no more pads). And the suspension change probably wasn't necessary but the cinch buckles are SO easy & splicing the amsteel is a fun DIY project so why not? I had read on a couple threads where people had experienced a lot of strain on the bugnet after their zipper mod but from what I can tell by using the bias tape on the hammock body I have as much or even more slack on the netting after the mod than before. So if you have an old bottom entry scout laying around and you're not sure about doing the zipper I say dive in and get to it all in all a pretty easy mod.
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