(upbeat guitar music)
G'day folks, Ben from Snowys.
We're down at a four-wheel drive show today
where Darche has kindly invited us under their stand.
And I wanna show you their Eclipse 180 Awning.
This is a 180 degree awning, gives 180 degrees
of shade on the side of your car.
It's easy to set up with one person.
It gives you about 8 square metres of coverage.
I'm gonna get started setting it up.
First thing I'll do is unzip the cover.
So once we've taken the cover off,
we notice there's two Velcro straps here.
Once we undo these, there's four arms that fold out.
So that's almost set up.
That was really easy.
Just remembering, we unfold the right-hand side
first as you're facing the awning.
The left-hand side second.
And then the tension is created through straps
that are attached to the back of your roof rack,
and just hook on each side there.
Now, there's 4 poles we've gotta put in place.
Darche class, this is free-standing
during pack up and set up.
So you should never leave the awning set up
without the 4 poles in place.
The first 2 poles are attached
underneath the awning here, and there's a Velcro
strap here we undo.
This just folds down.
And at the top here is a little kinda ball joint,
allows the awning to move around easily
in the socket there.
This is just a twist pole.
We extend that out, lock it in place,
and that gives that pole support.
We do the same thing on the other side here.
Now, the other two poles aren't actually
attached to the awning.
They come separate.
So you can actually pack these up inside the bag
if you like.
I didn't because they can fall on your head
if you forget they're there.
So let's chuck them in the back of the car.
These are just your regular extending twist lock
camping poles, and they just go in the end here.
There's a hole for the spigot to fit into.
They fit up there and that supports the sides.
That's the frame of the Darche 180 Eclipse Awning
all set up now.
Last thing you wanna make sure you do
is put guy ropes in place.
Now, there's 4 guy points which are
on each corner where the poles are.
Make sure you put them in place so that if the
wind picks up, the awning doesn't take off
where you cause any damage.
There are extra points in the middle
of each wall here as well.
Now these aren't guy points,
these are what they call rain gutters.
You've got enough guy ropes in your kit
to set these up as well.
Attach a guy rope here, tension it a little
to create a slope that allows the water
to run off and away from your awning.
You'll also notice there might be a little bit
of sagging between the walls here.
To fix that, just make sure you tighten
up the straps around the side.
That's the Darche 180 Eclipse Awning set up.
I'll show you how to pack it away now.
So the first thing we need to do to pack
it away is remove all the poles,
fold these two up inside the awning,
and undo our straps on the ends.
So now we've got all four arms loose.
In front here, we need to fold them
up inside the bag on top.
As we're facing the awning, we always need
to fold in the two left-hand arms first.
Now, this bottom one folds in,
the top one folds in over the top of it.
So we need to make sure this arm folds
in on top of this arm.
And as you go, make sure the fabric stays neatly folded.
It's going to make it so much easier
to fit it back in the bag.
Next step is to fold these two arms,
one on top of each other against those two arms.
Before I go any further, a couple of things
I wanna make sure of.
Firstly, I want to make sure these buckles
are accessible on the top.
There's nothing worse than folding it up
and finding you can't reach them.
Now secondly, I wanna make sure this fabric
is folded neatly.
The neater or flatter this is folded,
the easier it's gonna be to get in the bag.
So this one looks good, but underneath here,
it's a bit bunched up.
So I'm just gonna straighten this out.
So from here, if we wanted, we could
put the two extra poles up on top here.
I'm not gonna do that because you forget about it
and it falls on your head.
I just throw them in the back of the car
on my roof rack.
Now, folding this is paramount to being
able to get it back in the bag easily.
Now, Darche recommend a 3-step process.
There's a fold, a roll, then a fold.
I'll step you through it.
Firstly, we fold.
From here, we roll.
Nice and tight.
Don't go all the way to the top, stop just short
because from here, we want to fold again.
We don't want the fabric hanging below the frame.
We want it sitting up here alongside the frame.
So we do another fold here
to bring it up next to the frame.
From there, we can do the straps up.
Last step is to put the bag over the top.
(zipper closing)
That is how you set up and pack away
the Darche Eclipse 180 Awning.
You can pick these up off our website
at lowest prices everyday and free delivery
to just about anywhere in Australia.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you next time.
(upbeat pop music)