Alright so im kinda new here, but have been looking around at things for a good bit. I was given a simple standard gathered end hammock a couple months ago and have really enjoyed toying with it, by far my favorite thing to do is design new suspension systems and then continually refine them. While looking at bigger and better hammocks then mine I found the Hennessy hammocks and really like the fact that the hammock and tarp was hung from 1 line but there was still plenty of room under the tarp. Once seeing this I immediately went into thought about how I could copy this and use it with my hammock and tarps. This is what I have come up with thus far. I wrote things out in detail so I hope it makes it easier to understand. If I get the time I may attach a diagram later on.
First off, I have 2 6' tree huggers that go around said trees, Then I have a piece of 1/8" amsteel that is 40' long with a 2" fixed eye spliced into one end. To hook up the main ridgeline I run the tree huggers around the tree and then clip a climbing grade carabiner through the 2 loops on the end of the tree hugger. On the end of the amsteel with the fixed loop I clip that onto the carabiner as well, on the other end I have 2 repel rings clipped into the other carabiner that I use to make a tension buckle, after a good hard pulling to get it as tight as possible I put a slippery half hitch for extra security.
Now, tied onto the main ridgeline I have 4 klemheist knots made of 1.75 yellow zing-it. Clipped to 2 of these knots are 2 mini non-climbing carabiners. Clipped to the other 2 are 2 normal climbing carabiners. Hooked to the 2 mini carabiners are the 2 ridgeline tie outs of my tarp. Hooked to the each of the 2 climbing carabiners are a fixed eye loop made of 7/64 amsteel with a 24" whoopie sling.
The hammock clips by Maillons on each end of the hammock to the 2 whoopie slings attached to the biners attached to Klemheist knots on the main ridgeline.
Heres what I like about this setup.
I only have to run 1 line, with 2 connections to trees.
I can hang just about anywhere. I can hang between trees as far apart as about 40' apart,
I can set the hammock and tarp anywhere between the 2 trees I want my simply unloading the klemheist knots and sliding them to where I want.
I can put any size tarp on that I want by simply adjusting the Klemheist knots to be taut.
Using one of the #4 snake skins from hennessy hammocks I can fit this entire thing inside of 1 snake skin.
I can adjust the sag to be tight, or very loose depending on what hammock I have and how I want to sleep.
I can use just about any hammock with this setup.
What I dont like.
It is not easy to get the main ridgeline tight and it does tend to want to sag after being loaded for hours,to compensate for the sag and run length and weight I have to hang my tree huggers up about 7feet, or as high as I can reach.
Because I cannot get the line to completely taut keeping a tarp taut when hanging in the hammock is difficult without using some kind of special tensioner or something.
So there are a few things that could make this better.
1 Some way of pulling more tension on the main ridgeline would mean a lower possible hang.
2 some kind of simple tensioner to use on the tarp, (Im thinking about adding about 6" of shock cord to the 1.75 zing it guy lines I have to pull out the slack,)
What do you think? Anything I can improve or change to make it better? With this setup im going for 2 things, flexibility (being able to hang comfortably between just about any 2 trees), and simplicity (Being able to setup quickly and easily, with out knots).
Edit:
Alright, here is a really cruddy diagram I made up in paint to help imagine what I described above.
So ofc the brown are 2 trees, the black line is the 1" wide webbing connected with a carabiner to the 1/8" ( grey line) amsteel. Then connecting to the amsteel are the 4 yellow lines which are the 4 klemheist knots made of 1.75 zing it, attached to 2 of those is the big blue trapazoid which would be the tarp, then connected to the other 2 Yellow klemheist knots is a a length of 7/64" amsteel with a whoopie sling on it which connects to the hammock.
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