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Hawk wing awning from direct 4x4

Yep, and despite our comments on the paint job, she's looking the business Steve, love that colour combo...

Glad you have her back :thumbup:
 
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Looks like some of you guys have had the hawk wing for a bit now, still happy with them ?

- KB
 
Took the bait, at that pricing it was seeming like a good deal.

Got it last Friday AM, which was timely since we were heading out for the weekend. Yup, this last wet wet and windy windy Friday night we were sitting in a tent out in a farm near Brighton.

We did use this, and while I still think its a good deal, it certainly is lesser good a good deal than I had thought on Friday AM.

There are a couple of fundamental issues that need attention here :
1) You can largely just open it up, walk it from left around the truck, tie it up at the other end, but its not going to stay up. It really does need the vertical support poles. Which can be done by one person, but now needs a bit of forward planning and thought.

2) the horizontal poles that support the awning are on TOP of the awning, and not under the awning. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Its just means that every segment is its own water and wind management zone. nothing to be done about this, it is what it is.

3) the entire thing is built mostly for sun and fair weather. When stuff gets really wet, the fabric is super water proof, but water will pour in from the outer edge ( which is fine, sort of expected ) but also form the inner side along the sides of the truck!. There are no gutters or any sort of water management on the inner two edge's - so in 15miles/hr winds, i moved the L shape upside down ( so its more L and not inverted L, to have the awning mounted now a good 6" above the roof level, and moved the whole thing about 6" forward, so when deployed, we lost 6 " on both the left side and the back of the truck, but the water management / slopes on the truck dramatically reduced the amount of water coming in.

4) now driving back home with the entire awning sticking out so far above the truck was... unsettling ( i did check and it was just about within the outer footprint of the truck, so all legal, just far too high up.

5) the awning cover, the grey bag itself isnt water proof. and on the drive out, ~ midday Friday, it wasent quite 'pouring' yet, but there was water inside the awning bag when we got to the site.

6) there are channels in the awning that extend from the outer edge of each of the horizontal support poles to the next and so on; so using something like the oztent ridge poles, its possible to add poles there to strengthen the overall structure. Since I have 2 oztent's, there were 4 ridge poles, that at max extension fit perfectly ( just a hint under 9 ft each ). Makes a HUGE difference to the wind management of the whole setup. But these poles are not included with the awning itself, they really should be - or even just some sort of a bungee rope that creates a nice right straight line between each set of successive horizontal pole ends would be good.

7) there is no way to attach any side walls. A hack might be to just hand up tarps from the vertical support poles...; any other elegant solution is going to need a bit of DIY pedantic on the fabric itself.

8) the hinges for the inner end of the horizontal poles looks like fairly strong metal, but its all stacked, and there is NO play in there at all, so while on paper it looks like one can change height of the vertical support poles, there is really no way you can without causing stress on the hinge. all of them really need to be within a few inches of each other in heght.

9) so that water puddle management on the top ? the only way to address that is to guyline and peg down each section; and they provide a loop in the canvas for it....

10) the final thing... I've got some flagpole base's for the vertical poles. am going to drill through the pole and attach these bases ( they are ~ 3" by 1.5" flat metal with a slot for the pole, and 2 more holes one on either side ). Now I can put in pegs to hold the pole down into the ground. With that in, the pole isnt going anywhere till 40 - 45miles/hr winds. so on a dry day, I dont need any guy lines anymore. on a wet day, I still need to peg down the centre points of each segment to get the water off it.

Otherwise, all in all, everything said and done - I still think that at this price point its a good buy. The fabric looks quite good ( time will tell... ) and the hinges, which I assume to the weakest point in a structure like this, are all metal and look fairly stable, but again time will tell. Specially with little kids when one needs a bit more cover than 2m by 2.5m - it was very handy to stay out of the rain. And the oztent front's attach quite nicely to the edges.

Realise this post would have made a lot more sense and been a lot more useful with pictures, but I dont take any at the time :/ Maybe one of these days, I'll get this deployed again and do some pics.

regards and hope this is helpful,
 
Mine is still in the attic, still not worked out a way of fitting it to the hilux :(
 
Mine has been ok in the rain, shorten the support poles and do the mid points on each span had worked well. The cover is definitely not waterproof but doesn't seem to have a detrimental effect. Mounted off the side of the roof rack and goes just above the rear door so all good, back the truck into the tent so they just might and gives enough room to do the poles


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Fitted some LEDs to the bottom of the awning, 3m backing so hopefully will stay put.


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So just looking at this post, as the wind got my awning this weekend camping and broke 2 of the poles!! The one time I walk for a pub lunch without guying it down (no wind to speak off when I left) I come back and the its sitting on my roof like a pyramid!!!
4 years of good usage, not bad and I think it would have done another 4!!
Now what do I get instead? Self supporting, Shadow or Ostrich wing on my patriot roof rack which weighs a ton already. Batwing to keep the weight down and I like the tampered side walls.
Oh the joys of research!!
 
Just bought the Batwing and it’s amazing tbh. Very happy with it putting it out and back very easy and usable. Only issue I’ve had it the cover bag was damaged but they said they will send me another one in the coming months.

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Just bought the Batwing and it’s amazing tbh. Very happy with it putting it out and back very easy and usable. Only issue I’ve had it the cover bag was damaged but they said they will send me another one in the coming months.

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Looks a good job, one person deployment? did you buy any side walls? Is it light?
 
One person deployment a much improved version from the fox wing I’m told. Has strong magnets to hold up the rods whilst putting it back into the bag. Even me being a novice was made to look easy.

Legs built in had it out earlier again but where I am in the mountains it’s too windy to leave it out overnight so packed it away in minutes. No fuss no worries.

You can’t wrong for £650 tbh

If you need any details p.m me.

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