Angus

I wear steel capped safety boots while climbing. Why would chainsaws be the only risk in the trees to you guys? What about when you get to the ground, do you walk to the car and swap from your work runners to your boots? My boots have saved my feet from enough potential injuries in the tree to know they are worth having. Mostly crush and puncture injuries. Different work environments I guess.

Best bet would be to contact ATRAES and find out what the shipping is. Australian Tree Climbing Gear And Rope Access Equipment :: Tree Climbing Equipment :: Advanced Climbing Systems :: ATRAES MicroFrog SRT System

For what it is worth, Graeme McMahon wrote an article for the Australian ArborAge on the topic of "Tree Rescue or Not Tree Rescue" last month. The pdf tree rescue document on our website is directly from the magazine, and is an exert of the tree rescue rationale Graeme wrote years ago. There will be a text version on the website soon.

For as long as I can remember, we've installed extra lines on jobs where a rescue system cannot be safely setup in a reasonable time. i.e. trees over 200ft, thick understory etc. It is not often, but it forms part of recovery and emergency plans for some jobs. Everyone seems to have their own opinion on it. Here is mine. Hot debate has run on this exact issue for as long as I can remember. Its been difficult to discuss, especially if you represent small business. Training Providers and Large companies can take the moral high ground, and squash wholesome debate on the grounds of safety. Sadly, much of industry is affected by the emotional arguments put forward by those on the moral high ground. Firstly you should identify whether you think it is reasonable for you have someone competent enough to perform a rescue, follow you around to each job, just in case. For most jobs that would be as logical as suggesting an ambulance should follow you around on the roads, just in case you have a car accident. The point Paul makes about the competency of "trained rescue climbers" is valid: The rescue climbing ticket MUST be of an operational standard. Too often in practice, this seems to not be the case. If the climber cannot perform a rescue under reasonable circumstances, they are NOT a rescue climber. The increased pay they receive, and the illusion of safety hasn't actually improved the likelihood of you surviving your accident. Don't let statistics fool you either - how many deaths in this industry are people disconnecting, and falling out of the tree? Importantly, how many deaths could have been prevented had a rescue climber been on the ground? What if the same effort was put into learner climbers gaining good skills, rather than receiving a ticket and being deemed operationally competent. There is a lot of money in offering a low standard ticket, training providers around the world are cashing in on this demand. As in industry we seem caught under the illusion that these tickets and training are improving safety. Often climbers that are inadequate to make daily climbers, are the ones that are going to perform the rescue. How can they be called rescue climbers? Ambulance officers don't just get a first aid ticket.... Oh I could go on, and on, and on. Its all been said before. You've gotta do what feels safe for you. If you don't feel safe at work, something is wrong. I encourage you to look past the illusion of safety a rescue ticket provides, be unemotional and factual. Don't get caught up in theoretical situations. Deal in facts.

You give me too much material to work with. I hope they put full fat milk in your soy mochachino. In the sense that a gri-gri is a mechanical friction device, yes they're similar. The analogue control Joe mentioned, over your decent speed is not as intuitive at first which makes them very different. When the tail of the rope leaves a gri-gri, it tends to not pull slack through the device. It needs to be manually tended. The SJ almost self tends. At least that is what I understand...

I think so. The one over the main road? Or do you mean the video of folding the whole row of Eucs onto themselves at dawn, and then craning off? I don't wanna derail the thread, talk to you on the email?

Oh yeh! I keep forgetting to do that. I'm stuck in a backlog of video at the moment in preparation for Sydney, but I might put together a 'folding tree montage'. We've done a few now, some with explosives.

pfft! I just hadn't had a big enough audience - I'm waiting for ISA Sydney Glad to see your here too Joe, your amongst good company.

Joe is definitely a commercial climber, and heavy engaged in industry around the country. The style he uses in that video, is the same he uses at work.

Generally there is no set wage for contract climbers, it is very much to your interpretation of what you are worth. Freelance contract climbing tends to attract higher hourly rates, although it is highly competitive. Plenty of companies around the capital cities looking for safe, reliable and competent climbers.

Yep, its all about knowing what tensions will leave your load in equilibrium.

I don't understand the point your making?

Doh. Can't edit my post. Adjusted some things. It still puts out some crazy numbers under certain conditions. If I get some time over the next little while I'll put some formula restraints on. All real world situations should work no problem, odd systems like 500l89r89b, 500l90r45b etc. Won't throw errors like its supposed to... yet. Opposing Pendulums RC1.1

Hrm. No its the way the program deals with the inputs. The program forces itself to use two ropes. In reality when you input 90degrees, you should be told all the weight is on one rope. However the program can only do as its told, and so it treats the second rope as a pole, rather than a rope. I left the option open to enter ANY value, however it is confusing to allow users to enter non-standard parameters. I'll adjust some stuff.

Wowzers! A lot of work went into that! rofl. Finally, robotic beings rule the world.

Fixed a few problems... Opposing Pendulums Example RC1 Have fun!

Thanks all! Sorry about the long delay, I've been away at a bucks weekend over west coast (Victoria). I don't think we have "bumble bees" here in Australia, and if we did I doubt their protected. Judging the concern and laws you have about bees, they are perhaps not so prolific as they are here in Australia. On this particular job there were 3 wild bee hives within a 1/4acre. With regards to pollarding with the intention of allowing them to relocate (particularly during winter), the success rate of the hive would be almost nil as there are many specific conditions which must be met before bees will successfully swarm and survive. Because of this I suspect pollarding for us would be a fruitless, cruel and expensive endeavour. Perhaps Bumble Bees are different? Bee's have been dying mysteriously around the world over the last few years. We have a number of our own hives that have just died for no apparent reason. Hopefully this summer we'll catch a few more swarms to help replace them. I know I will definitely be making a habit of having a clear route to egress from the tree in future... no amount of medical kit up the tree would have saved me if I was stuck!

I've just put some numbers into the program... I've coded something incorrectly. I'll post an updated version sometime soon.

Funny that. You were probably also using the correct sized fig8 for your rope too? Has anyone got any numbers to back up the "inherent" risks of non-backed up fig8's in recreational and occupational activities? I know for me, the weight of the rope alone stops me from descending. The video of Graeme doing that dead Euc I just recently posted, I was at around 180'. When I descend I have to lift the rope up from under me, and feed it into the fig8. At 50' if I let go, I would very slowly descend - Its not until I'm about 20' off the ground, that I can finally use a brake hand... By then its all over!

Thanks All! I'm all good now - just got back from a surf. Darn it! Why didn't I think of that! I know SWB didn't, but I was thinking about his question about bitey critters as I sat there pulling out stingers. I almost laughed. Ironically, we keep bee's ourselves. We've got quite a few bee hives. I just didn't see this hive when I was poisoning the one below it! Unless they swarm, you cannot simply remove them from the tree into a new box, so there wasn't much chance of doing that. The honey generally isn't worth trying to extract because its not in frames (also there is that added risk if you've been poisoning!) Very very lucky... I've been thinking about it a lot. Most times it was taking me three or so attempts to get my flip line around this barrel. It was rough flakey bark, heavy leaning tree. The odds of me getting my fliplines sorted so quickly... A few more seconds and I reckon 30 bites would have been a few hundred. They were really upset. The video would be very funny.

A few days ago I poisoned a bee hive so I could remove the tree. Started the job yesterday, cut through the hive - definitely all dead. Went up another 20', took out another branch and... I found another hive. I've never put a flip line around a 4' barrel so fast, and then down climbed with such efficiency. The bee's chased me for about 400m, I was bitten over 30 times, mostly on the head and chest. While we were waiting for an exterminator, my body was showing signs of Anaphylaxis. We had an epipen just in case, but we popped into the local doctors who then promptly sent me off to hospital. A shot of adrenaline, quartazone, something else, and 6 hours of observation and I was all good. I was extremely lucky on a number of fronts. It was only the day before Dad was telling me not to leave stubs and ivy on a tree, just in case I find some sort of bitey animal and need to get out of the tree quickly. Had I needed to down climb past stubs and ivy, I may have been bitten hundreds of times before reaching the ground.

Its not finished by any stretch, but here is an implementation of Opposing Pendulums that will eventually be able to generate a graphical interpretation of the system from the user's input. Download Opposing Pendulums Basic You will need the .NET framework to make it work.

Both statements are not mutually exclusive. By definition the overall vector forces must cancel out in order for the load to remain static. If there was no negation of force in pre-calculations, the block would dynamically load the system and shift to a position where it was in equilibrium. In answer to the second part, the block with the highest line angle will have the most weight. I might whip up an application tonight for opposing pendulums so you can have a play with some numbers.

Really? If you had a source on that Rupe, I would be very interested in reading it. In the same way - how many deaths have been caused in the arboriculture industry from people sliding to their deaths on a figure 8? Are there any statistics? I would be quite interested to know the facts, as I've not heard of one person 'letting go and sliding out of control to their death'. If anyone could produce statistics I would ask; were they really descending, or were they work positioning with a figure 8?

You win!