By adding an awning to the side of your 4WD you quickly and easily open up a world of opportunities for setting up a fully waterproof and UPF50+ shade just about anywhere you get your car set up. By running an awning you have a handful of shelter that is on demand and extremely versatile by allowing you to add a number of accessories to perfectly suit your setup, from the hugely popular awning walls which easily double your sheltered space, all the way up to an Awning Tent which is a fully enclosed shelter that attaches beneath your awning for a great amount of usable shelter at camp!

The entire range of Adventure Kings Awnings are excellent value for money but how hard are they really to set up, particularly when you are setting up on your own, maybe with the little ones running around. If you grew up like we did setting up canvas tarps with guy ropes and poles you probably would rather settle for getting rained on!  But fear no more setting up an awning single handed is much easier than you expected and with a few little tricks you can set yours up extremely quickly.

Step 1 – Park your vehicle.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have an awning on both sides of your vehicle, so when pulling up to your space you need to consider how much room your awning requires to be set up. Not only for room, but also for better protection from the elements.

Keeping in mind where sunset will be (particularly if you love to kick back with a refreshment and watch the daily light show, as well as prevailing wind, incoming storms and the like.

With this figured out, we can begin setup!

Step 2 – Unzip

All Adventure Kings Awnings use a heavy-duty PVC cover, this cover offers protection not only from the elements when you have your awning stashed away, it simply unzips the whole length and can tuck away out of the way, once your awning cover is unzipped you will see you have a 3 velcro fastener straps holding the bundled awning fabric in place against  the side of your Awning.

When tackling this single handed you can release the two outside straps placing the load on the center strap, with one free hand brace the awning to prevent it falling free and release the final remain strap, releasing the awning ready to be set up.

Step 3 – Side Poles

This step is where people get muddled by juggling the two horizontal poles and the awning fabric, which can all be a bit daunting. The best thing to do is to unroll a small amount of the awning fabric and place the whole bundle on the roof racks of your vehicle.

This allows you to unfold both of the horizontal poles and extend them to outside of the footprint of your setup awning.

Getting you ready for the next step!

Step 4 – Unroll

This step is the fun bit. Grab the rolled-up awning and begin to unroll the fabric all the way to the final aluminium extrusion which is where the legs are stashed away inside! Pop both the legs out and place them so they are bracing against the sag in the fabric.

If there is no wind you can leave it standing on its own for just a second whilst you grab the horizontal arms ready to locate into the correct position, simply lock the end pins into the pre-drilled sockets on either end of the extruded end piece and extend the twist lock sections until the awning fabric is taught then lock into place!

Step 5 – Finishing touches!

The Adventure Kings Awnings have a few finishing touches that make it an extremely versatile setup, with the Velcro loops situated along the entire length of the awning fabric, by using your Velcro straps you can get much more tension across the fabric to ensure water doesn’t pool in the case of rain, and out of the box includes a set of guy ropes to allow you to peg out your awning to keep it from catching the wind particularly when set up in more coastal areas where sea breeze and gusty afternoon squalls that may make your awning want to catch the breeze!

With everything said and done, setting up an awning for camping or lunch breaks can easily be done single handed in under a minute with no sweat, no swearing and no tears!

For more information about the range of Awnings to upgrade your campsite, head to www.4WDSupacentre.com.au, call us on 1800 88 39 64 to speak with an expert or come in and say G’day to one of our experts in store for the latest bargains!