GREAT IDEA BUT FLAWED DESIGN

I just finished taking down our large Kelty Sunshade which Santa brought the family for Christmas. I thought it would be a great way to provide shade for soccer events and camping. My initial idea was to use it over our MSR tent as it's often too hot to have the rain fly on, but we need the protection from rain storms, so I figured this would be a type of rainfly suspended over our tent. I still plan to use it for this purpose.

My hope is that they'll refine the design as I believe there is significant room for improvement with the current configuration.

Essentially the three legged design is a good one. It provides ample shade and can be used for a variety of purposes. It will handle wind and there are ample stakes and tie downs for extreme conditions. The material is excellent, and it would seem that it’s bombproof.

Now, for the bad news...and there's a good bit. First, don't attempt to put it up by yourself. If your wife, son or whomever is "busy", then forget about putting it up without getting totally frustrated and being tempted to ball the whole thing up and throwing it away (a thought which has crossed my mind several times).

Some of the problems are that the poles are larger than aluminum poles you’ll find with many tents. The poles that come with the Kelty Sunshade are too large, as they’re about the size of an index finger in thickness. These are made of fiberglass with metal connectors spaced about every 2 feet. The problem is that the nylon material which forms the "tube" bunches up, especially in the area where the three poles intersect (at the top). Combine this with elastic cording which runs throughout the interior of the fiberglass poles, which seemingly lack sufficient tension, and you'll find that not only do you have a train wreck with poles and material at the top of the structure, but when you try to straighten it all out, the weak elastic cording enables the fiberglass sections to come apart, further adding to your problems.

To add to the situation, you'll find that on one end of the poles there is a pointed tip, and the other is a blunt one. If you have someone who isn't paying attention to which end got threaded in the nylon tube, then you have to pull the pole out again (rather push it, so the pole won't come apart) trying to avoid the continual problem of material bunching up. A process which will take probably take 5 or minutes per pole. (Thankfully we threaded the correct end into the tube first.)

OK, about 10-20 minutes into the exercise, you now realize that the only way to get the poles to stick into the grommets is to arch the entire assembly so that each pole can be attached. This dawns upon you after you have done all you can to get the poles into the grommets without success. This is also the time you’ll notice if you stuck the wrong end of the pole through the nylon tubing, as the blunt end won’t fit in the grommet, and you can’t get the structure to stand up. (This is where you find you’ll have to pull the pole back out and start over.)

Once the structure is up, you may find you’re looking for excuses to avoid taking it down. (I know I have.) You’ve gone though more trouble than it’s probably worth to get it up, and now you have to get it back down.

To get it down, you need to recognize that you’re going to be much better off with more than one person doing this. The problem is that you’re probably going to have the nylon “tube” material bunch up even more, as you’re trying to get the poles back out. The metal connectors snag on the material causing it to bunch up, combined with the tension of the material, lack of sufficient elasticity with the poles’ interior shock cord and the thickness of the poles. The pointed ends of the poles, now freed from the grommets, tend to stick into the ground and form an unyielding attachment to the soil, driving itself into the ground as if being a long tent stake. Then, if the sections of the fiberglass poles separate (which have each time we’ve used it) you then have to fish the disjointed sections of the poles to meet back with the other sections of the poles. (I have to tell you, I was so frustrated at this point, it was all I could do to keep from wading it all up and throwing it away.)

Kelty has a good idea with this structure, but it could be much better by doing the following:

1. Adopting standard aluminum poles, which are smaller, lighter and typically have better elastic cording running through them. Such tubing could be threaded much easier through the nylon tubing and eliminate the bunching of fabric as the aluminum poles lack the larger, bulky metal connectors.
2. Adopting an external clip arrangement for the poles. In this way, all a person would have to do is lay the fabric on the ground, clip the poles in place and put the ends in a grommet. With this arrangement, you probably could put the structure up by yourself, and doing so in about 5 minutes total time.
3. Revamping the stuff sack arrangement. Although it is possible to repack everything into the original stuff sack, it probably is a challenge for some. The recommendation would be to create a stuff sack similar to what MSR is doing with their expedition tents, which is creating a wide opening down the side of the bag, which allows you to even ball up the fabric, place it in the bag and pull the drawstring to close it. The stuff sack could also use being constructed of thicker material.

Should you buy it, or would I buy one again? I know that I could return the item to where Santa obtained it and get a refund, but I think the benefits of the design outweigh the overall problems. Thankfully I have a family of six and we can take the time to pull our resources together to put the structure together as a family project. I know, however, this shelter won’t be going to as many outings as I’d hoped, it’s simply too much trouble.

My hope is that Kelty will totally redesign the sunshade, adopt a different pole configuration, attachment system and ensure that it’s much easier for folks to assemble than it is now.