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Self installing tent-pegs could save campers lots of time.
It is basically a telescopic pole which shrinks to 1 inch long with a small disk on top. When you stamp on the disk the telescopic peg is pushed into the ground and a small cylinder of compressed air "unfolds" the peg and fires it into the ground.
To re-use the peg just pump up the small cylinder by pumping the peg up and down.
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I don't know that you'd get enough air in a cylinder small enough to do this. A pointed steel spike and a hammer is probably still a better solution. No valves to leak. Low tech is usually used because it works every time. |
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I don't know about every time, [UB]...I've found numerous ways to go wrong with a pointed spike and a hammer - most of them also involve hard ground & stones and result in a bent spike. |
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I use 1/2 inch steel about 18 in long with the top turned over and back across itself in a T shape. They'll drive into almost anything but solid rock. Run the points across the grinding wheel occasionally to keep them nice and sharp. |
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You're evidently used to a far more hardcore version of camping than I am... |
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Builders use devices which shoot nails into wood (and into concrete) using an explosive charge. You could use a similar device for driving tent pegs. Handy if you're camping on a huge unbroken expanse of granite, say. Or in a parking garage. |
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Disadvantage is that you'd eventually run out of explosive charges and have to go back to civilization to get more. |
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I dunno if you'd penetrate rock, though. If you didn't, then one of two things would happen: the telescoping bit of the peg would bend and get ruint, or the disk would bang up into your foot. And if you did penetrate the rock, how in the devil would you get the beast back out? |
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I use aluminum stakes about 25 cm long because I go backpacking and I don't wanna lug those steel spikes of UnaBubba's up trails that grow steeper each year. If the ground's too rocky to drive 'em I just put a stick through the tie-down and pile boulders on it. Snow camping is great, you stomp the stick and tie-down into the snow and by nightfall it's frozen in and you couldn't pull it out with a truck. (To get it back out you have to excavate it completely.) I just love camping. |
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I'm guessing that they'd penetrate rock, or could be designed to --- they penetrate concrete, after all. |
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You wouldn't take them out. You'd just detach your tent and leave them there. Evantually, all exposed rocky surfaces on the planet would have some handy tent pegs sticking out of them, for the convenience of future campers. |
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For comfort's sake it's probably best not to camp on ground that you can't bang a regular peg into. In my experience, pegs into sand is the trickiest one. |
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The pegs aren't designed to penetrate rock, just to go into normal soil. If they hit rock they shoot out of the ground you pump them up and try again in a different place. |
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If you're only putting the pegs in normal soil you don't even need a hammer - I just push mine in with my foot on the (rare) occasions when I find soil under the peg. |
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Perhaps a drilling action would be more useful for penetrating rock? |
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Screwing in pegs is a lot moe time consuming than just stamping on a peg but if there are lots of stones it could be useful. |
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The sand is the reason we use the big pegs we do. They are also very useful for prying oysters off rocks and opening them. |
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[Dog Ed], I'd rather carry four of these pegs than 20 litres (quarts) of water, which you often have to do in parts of Australia. In summer I need about 6-8 litres per day just to avoid dehydration. |
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Why don't all you saddos just book into a hotel? |
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I tried to do this but most hotels thoroughly object to me drilling my pegs into their floors |
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Would it not take more effort to pump the peg up than it would to hammer a normal peg into the ground? |
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