Yes you can use a pad and sleeping bag (as a quilt) and sleep in a hammock but there is more to it than that. A hammock takes a lot more tweaking than a tent does. I have used a tent for yrs and have tried the hammock for the past 2-3 yrs. There is still tweaking that goes on even now. I never noticed I was doing that until a person said I wouldn't mind trying a hammock but you are always adjusting it in some way and I do. There are folks who say they can hang it right the first time. I don't totally agree with that since every hanging situation is different (unless you never get out of your backyard like some do).
I must be doing something wrong, then. I don't tweak. I set up the hammock and sleep in it. Sometimes the trees are closer together or further apart, but that just does not seem to matter a bit. I hang, put on the underquilt, throw in the top quilt and clothes, and go fishing. If it looks cloudy or it will be very cold at night I put up the tarp too. When I started using figure nines on the tarp, someone asked if I enjoyed all the adjusting - I told her no, but it was my first time, and five or six setups from now, I would be enjoying other things a lot sooner. I was right.
I watched someone put up a tarptent this weekend. It looked dead simple too. However, the pitch was not taut at all, and I think he was lucky there was not any serious wind or rain. I've seen some loose tent flies on REI Half Dome tents. Everything needs tweaking, not everything gets it. Some things are subject to more expectations than others.
The main thing is that folks should get out and enjoy being out in the woods. Who cares what you use for a shelter. Seems it does to some and that applies to tenters and hammockers alike.
It doesn't matter to me what people use - I go out with tarpers, tenters and hammockers alike. It's just interesting that there is this perception that hammocking is like rocket science or something, when it's really more a matter of what you are willing to do, and what motivates you to do it.
From what I've experienced and seen, tents seem to me on a par with the tweakage, if you really intend to set them up to be weather-worthy. And setting up a tarp is simple until the conditions change - I watched someone fighting for an hour and a half to nail down the tie outs and edges of a spinnaker tarp in the wind. She's now shopping for a tent. Then there's a guy I hike with frequently who usually takes a bivy - he brought an ENO and hung with me, for the first time, with his thermarest and sleeping bag. He did it "all wrong" - trees were too close together, not enough sag, and he didn't have a tarp, even. He said he was comfortable. I certainly didn't lecture him on the use of tree straps or how banana shaped he looked in the hammock - he was fine with it, okay, so am I. The lady with the spinnaker tarp, unlike so many with spinnaker tarps who are satisfied, is driven elsewhere by tweaking. The bivy dweller with the hammock hung all wrong is fine. The difference in tweak factor has nothing to do with the hammock, tarp, or bivy. It's what they are willing to tolerate.
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