I had a chance to pull out the newest 305 I purchased and inspect and repack it at my parent's place today - this one if you recall:
It's pretty obvious from the pictures that the storage bag was not used correctly, so I figured the rest of it was probably not much better... When I pulled the bag off the half it was on, this is what I found:
None of the doors had been rolled up and secured, none of the window walls were attached to the wind-line hooks - side panels and doors were mixed in with the poles.
When I tried to open the tent, it wouldn't open - and after digging in the fabric for a while I found a door that had been snagged and pinched in the pivot/scissor-point of two bars:
I had to remove the pin to free the door and get the tent to move and open. Once I got it open I got a better look at the pinch damage to the door:
Once I got the tent spread a bit, I did my survey of the condition. Except for the tear in the door, only one spring-ring was really bad, all the others were in great shape so I replaced the ring with one from the repair kit I bought from they guy I've been talking to about completing the Base-X parts:
When the tent was mechanically sound (I can't do the fabric stuff today - some other time). I fixed the pre-storage problems - I hooked the window panels to the wind-line hooks, and rolled up and secured the doors:
I pushed in the tent and got two compression straps I had to buy from the local hardware store on it, then I got the bag over it, and strapped it really tight (if it starts to take the squared shape of the frame, you're doing it right):
Now in storage, it takes as little space as the other 305:
Now I have the 303 staring me in the face when I open the door to storage, hopefully I'll have a chance to re-pack that and inspect it next weekend - notice that a poorly packed 303 can take more space than a 305 properly packed:
I'll mention that I did all of this myself except for my dad helping with one of the compression straps (I only bought 10-foot straps, should have bought >12-foot straps), and a push loading it into my truck on my way back to storage. Also notice in the picture above that I had to lift the 250lb liner bag for the 303 onto the boxes behind the tent/frame so that I could get into storage past the tents... I can be done single handedly, and safely - one just needs to consider leverage and geometry and not be in a rush, I only weigh in the 160-ish range at 5'8" (1.7M).