Amok Draumr tips I have not seen before.

Just a couple random thoughts after a year of using the Draumr 5.0, just some things I haven’t seen mentioned before.

1. If you plan to sit up for a while, pull the straps into chair mode BEFORE you get in. Not only do you avoid having to wrestle it when you get in, but I think it actually makes it easier to enter the hammock, it kind of reduces the area you can drop your weight into a tighter center area. I’m always sitting up for a while before bed and started doing this.

2. Deflating the sleep pad a bit makes it more comfortable in chair mode, and the foot section can drop lower to give a more upright feel. I also think it might help by reducing the air pressure when the pad is in a bent position, but who knows.

3. You can put more air in the pad without getting out of the hammock. When you use the pump sack normally, the pressure is too strong to squeeze the air in, but if you reduce the size of the bag to roughly the size of a grapefruit (just a couple puffs of air in it), you can squeeze that air out into the pad very easily. If I want to tighten up the pad before sleep but don’t want to get out, I’ll hit it with like 10 little shots of air like that (vs. one big bag full).

4. Remove the pole set at the head while lounging. I did this recently and while it doesn’t sound like much, I was shocked how much more it opened up my visibility. It feels like sitting in a chair with a high back vs. having this hood over your head. Even if it’s just a couple inches of fabric, it makes a big difference in how it feels more open, just flip the loose fabric behind your head or around the back. I get claustrophobic and a huge sell point on hammock camping for me is the open feel. Once it’s bedtime you’d certainly lose your pillow, so I just drop the pole back in before bed.

5. Shug has showed videos where he is able to sit up with his feet on the ground on either side. It requires the right height to hang, and I didn’t learn how to sit that way until recently. It’s a nice option for cooking/eating etc., a good thing to learn.

6. The ends of the hang straps just lay there doing nothing, and if there’s enough length left after hanging the hammock, you can use those straps to hang things (water bottle/shoes etc). The little Velcro pieces can attach to the straps inside the hammock to make a sort of hanging loop (they hang over the side so obviously you can’t do this one with a bug net).