(german: Seilspanner)

Recently for CCCamp2023, I wanted to upgrade my new tent with fancy cord and spanners and thus, inadvertently, came to test and compare a few. Here's what I learned.

The four types of tensioners I tested.

1. modern 3 hole straight (black)
2. classic 3 hole triangle (metallic)
3. minimalistic bent 2-hole (red)
4. thread-able-in-after-the-fact with 2 small and one big hole (red)

The tensioners were rated according to performance in the following applications:

1. packing-size / space needed in your packed tent
2. how well it holds tension under force
3. how good it looks
4. ease of slackening or tensioning the line

TLDR: this is the best tensioner you can buy. The design is old but still the best.

- very much depends on the rope running around a peg with very small radius. Wont work as well when the line goes around a tree, lamp posts or something thicker.

TODO

My new Quechua tent shipped with tent-rope that had oval toggle-buttons (oblong buttons; Knebelknöpfe) on one end.

The idea being that the rope is easy to remove from the loops mounted on the tent.

I liked the idea and imitated it by buying some of these toggle-buttons online. I think they introduced it because

1. they can market it as more easy, as people don't have to tie a know
2. makes the tent better packable, as ropes don't get entangled during the folding process
3. when tying down the tent is optional, the lines are also optional

In hindsight however, I prefer the rope that is permanently tied to the tent (e.g. with a Palstek), because

1. it's quicker to deploy. The rope is already there
2. I always tie down the tent
3. the toggle-button can fall out while you try to fix the line if you slacken it for a moment, which is quite inconvenient