What was your first hammock?

[BillyBob58]

My old faithful HH Explorer UL with Super Shelter. Had no idea how to hang it much less how to make that SS work, and had a pretty miserable 1st night, swearing to never sleep in a hammock again. But the night after that was A-OK, and each of the next several nights better still. I have many hammocks now. It may not be my all time favorite of any I have tried, but it is still an overall winner for me. I have slept some profoundly deep hammock/wilderness sleeps in it!

After that came a Speer hammock and Pea Pod, then a Claytor No Net and Pea Pod, and somewhere around then came a BMBH and later an MW$ to go with it.

I can say some good things about all of those, and all have some minor ( to me ) negatives. They all beat the heck out of the ground and some beds!

[gunner76]

In the early 70's I tried a nylon string met hammock while on the AT. Most uncomfortable with the nylong cutting into my skin. Jump forward to a few years ago and I got a WBBB for my wife and myself.

[hang-in]

In 1989 or so when I was still in high school, I had a net hammock that I took on a couple camping trips just to relax in, but the thing was so uncomfortable that I didn't continue using it and pretty much wrote off hammocks as uncomfortable based on that. A couple years later a roommate had a net with spreader bars set up in the back yard that was also terrible.

I'd pretty much forgotten those when I started looking for a hammock for lounging recently and my internet searches brought me here and a couple other sites with DIY instructions. After reading, I started thinking hammocks might actually be a liveable alternative to taking a heavy tent, ground tarp, sleeping pad etc and sleeping on the hard, buggy uneven ground.

I've never liked that I didn't understand sewing machines, so I gave it a shot. It took about 8 hours to hem 4 straight sides of the 5x10 ripstop, but I got it and I've been getting better(?) at it since.

I realized immediately that I was going to need a bug net(I had a swarm of mosquitoes around me before I had it set up for the first time), so I sewed one from a military surplus bug net. And yesterday I sewed up a peak bag.

Now I'm interested in seeing first hand some other setups to see if there is something I'd like better than what I've made.

I also realized on my first hang that some under-insulation is going to be required for cooler months, so I'm thinking about what I want in that department.

A fabric hammock is so much more comfortable than a net. A world of difference. I'm really glad I'd forgotten those and took another look at hammocks.

[1camper]

Yeah I had a rope hammock on 1989 too.. certainly you couldn't sleep in it. Then in 2006 I bought an ENO double, loved it! So small, so ready to go. One night in Utah in 2009 and I was hooked on hammocks forever. I still like tents, sometimes they are a better option, but I prefer hammocks.

[DuctTape]

Besides the rope hammock we had as a kid, my first camping hammock was a Byer of Maine Amazona Mosquito Hammock. I used the rain fly from a Eureka Timberline tent. After that, I never looked back. Been swinging ever since.

[turnerminator]

My first hammock was a DIY job I made from nylon string that I had seen in the SAS survival handbook. It was awful but worked

That was 20 years ago, I think it may have started something.

[Shotgunred]

I went cheap, GT Skeeter Beeter UL $20 shipped. Handed down to my wife shortly thereafter and still in use today!

[Bellke]

A $5 nylon rope backyard hammock I got at Wal-Mart. It wasn't great and the only way I could get semi-comfortable was to let my feet hang out either side.

[mugs]

My first hammock was a WBBB 1.0 DL original, not the China pop ones. Since then I have bought several other hammock brands, all of which I am not going to list, and now I am rockin' a PSDB single.

[JDShearer]

This was my first hammock. Don't know the make, but I got it at Wally World about 10 years ago. I still have it and it gets used once in a long while.