softbankhawks

Cool, got it ! And it certainly feels so when mounting.

......but I wonder how price would affect my decision if for example the Smart Winch could be fabricated with an aluminium bollard, how do you make the judgement of price over efficiency, how efficient do you need or want to be? Certainly my GRCS has given me nearly a decade of use and is still rattling on, the Smart Winch seems more robust in design and I'm sure that the more enlightened metallurgists on this site can explain about the interesting alloys in the stainless steel back plate and bollard.

Hi Paul, thanks man, I'll pass it on to the guys that made the video ! Explorer Arb, do you mean that as more strap is wound on then MA is lost? I can see this but it must be marginal? What does tree size have to do with it? I bought my GRCS when Drayer were fabricating them for the European market and the aluminium drum I have is much larger than the current American ones. What a boon it is to have such a large diameter aluminium bollard, it's this that I'll always use for heavy or fast dynamic rigging.

I should say the back plate doesn't 'articulate', flex was the wrong word.

The elusive Smart Winch ! ODSK, our local arb retailer, bought in a Smart Winch and they made this video for their customers. We found the unit nice to use. It installs easily enough, 1 man or 2. I was initially concerned about its performance on smaller diameter trees as the back plate doesn't flex and I wasn't sure how tight the strap would get just using the winch handle, the GRCS gets a massive leverage force with its long bar but after days of dynamic rigging on red pines, timber around 300kg, we didn't see it shift it all. It can be cut into a tree on larger jobs and on the plus side there is no bar to carry and the unit is so much nicer to carry around than the GRCS. We work on very steep slopes here and sites can be up to 2 km away so these things matter to us. The winch is much like the GRCS winch but it has a contoured surface, I haven't used it enough to say anymore about how this affects winching capability. It performs much like the GRCS winch (both are Harken). Being able to switch to the beautiful and massive outer bollard is ace, it has 4 points of deflection to give the ropeman much sensitivity in regards friction. Using a second line the rope can be pretensioned on the winch and wrapped on the bollard. If you are careful then perhaps 2 ropes could be run at once although they would be in close proximity to each other. I like this unit a lot, makes me wonder why it hasn't been marketed better? [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx6wOiBI5VE&sns=em]?????????????? YouTube ?? - YouTube[/ame]

Hi Ryan, it is very cool and thanks for posting the video - I always assume multiple varieties of things going wrong, especially in real rescue situations and to me your video doesn't show enough redundancy for the safe belaying of the rescuer. Perhaps a quick link/lanyard connection in case of the rescuers RR release becoming entangled? How does 1 RR fair with 200kg on it? This can't be easily answered with so much disparity in friction between ropes, and then add bollard wear into the mix..? In-air rescue is interesting and there are many variations as I'm sure you know but in all seriousness what are the chances of somebody on an ascent/descent device needing this kind of rescue. Being knocked unconscious in mid-air by a rogue branch perhaps..I'd opt for trunk lower if there is a clear line from the victim to the ground, even if it involves some additional on-the-spot rigging at ground level.

Forestry skylines are similar but the english reeve as an entity, if I'm not mistaken, comes directly from high angle rescue. The outcome is the same, ability for multi-directional movement. We have an abundance of anchor trees, thinking back to my time in the south-east of england then it'd be harder to imagine having the facility to install so much rigging gear, surely you are right, you could go a lifetime without wanting or needing this system. Watching Will Koomijan's tree-verse lecture in the states and he said the same thing but there is a fundamental conceptual/working change after having used new techniques, we automatically begin to see areas of application that before were out of reach. I firmly believe in the practice of new ideas because a kit bag rammed full of technique is certainly more beneficial than an empty one. Anyways, I see this working splendidly for our next big speed line job, we will rig it over the tree and literally create the mythical 'sky hook'! I attached a picture but it may not help explain anymore, I don't have anymore.....yet. To be continued....!

Thanks dude, wondered why this thread has had no interest for other arbtalkers? Is nobody interested in rigging practice !!?

David covered so much in his pictures but there is more and more to do with these rings! Amazing things that we now would be lost without. Here is a double whip with balancer legs using the extra large 'beast'.

uploading 1 at a time...sheese lou-ise....I've put the rest on my blog....thewoodenhand.tumblr.com

piks ..

piks ..

For those that don't know of an English Reeve it is a system designed to move loads horizontally and vertically - 4 ways - up / down / left / right (there's loads of good information from a quick google word search). I've been talking to Mike Popham about the system for a couple of months and was waiting for the opportunity to try it out and I'm very glad that we managed it. I think that at first glance it all seems overly complex but believe me from never doing it, working it all out on site, installation took us 3 hours and I'm positive that time will be wittled down with some practice and experience. Our sites are along railway lines and often with high voltage wires, we will stay at a site some times up to a month so for us setting this up in future is going to save a lot of ball aching with rigging planning, setting, dismantling. We used it for 2 days this time and have only scratched the surface of its use, we pulled tops and trunks and then lifted the trunks up into one area. I've been mulling over uses for it arboreally, with the size and shape of these larch and red pine it makes so much sense to lift out multiple branches in one swipe. The set up contains 2 anchor trees with two guy ropes on each. On each tree there are three anchor points. The top is the left/right pull line anchor, middle is the main traverse line and bottom is the lift line. We used a large impact block for the trolley and tied the pull lines into the hole. A soft shackle joined the reeve to the impact block. The reeve is a rigging plate and 3 pulleys. It gives mechanical advantage to the lift. All the ropes were run back to the 'control station'. 1 portable honda winch was used to control everything. Does anyone have experience with this system? How/Why did you use it? The winch man complained of massive twisting in the lift rope which made his work a pain. I think it was because we used Samson nystron which is s t r e t c h y , perhaps a class2 would be better?

Reg, your placement is pitch perfect, astounding.

The way I see it is if your chest harness is tight enough your bridge ring does just fine for the top attachment - cuts down on extra transportable gunk too.