Will Hinchliffe

I like that Idea:thumbup1:

You could try setting up a RADS SRT climbing system with your lockjack and a hand ascender. You might need to put a pully bellow your lock jack to redirect it. It would be interesting to know if you could descend smoothly on it, I think you might need to add friction for the descending.

When I was at Uni they were very strict about the way you referenced. We had to reference in whats called the Harvard referencing style.

Get a mistriss That should burn it off:001_tongue:

Cool:thumbup1:

Sounds interesting. Maybe you could put it on here when its done. When I was at Merrist wood we had a really good lecture by Quentin Nichols of Abortrack. They have carried out surveying worldwide and would probably be good people to contact.

The field guide to VTA by Claus Mahtek is great.

I want a go. looks interesting. Very inovative.

Its quite complex installing a lightning protection system on a tree. You need to contact Ben Fuest who is an expert on this. I would try to bring him in on the project. I saw him talk last year. He really knows his stuff. You need to consider that if you install it incorrectly the lightning strike could flash-over from the lightning conductor in the tree to a nearby object.

Needs some barn doors on the back

I was setting up for a climb last month and this crow swooped down and picked up my asccenders. I think it must have flown to Scotland and dropped them. I would be vary grateful for there return.

Ha ha Jinx

We have been using the curved ARS saw since the arb show. I put some old spike straps through the slots and it works great on the leg. It has stayed sharp and cuts great. It doesn't seem to collect gunk and tarnishes on the blade as much as a silky. I also had a go on the really short ARS saw. I think it is a great size if you make most of your cuts with a chainsaw and use your hand saw only for really small branches. The hand saw is so dinky it stays right out of the way. They are the only saw I have used that compares in quality to the silky. We put a new blade on the Zubat at the same time as we were given the ARS saw and currently there is nothing really between them in terms of sharpness. The ARS seems to give a smoother cut in softer woods like Lime than the Zubat which is a little jumpier. I am interested to see if the Ars will eventually become unusably blunt when the Zubat bat does or if it remains sharp. It says on the ARS website that you can switch the fittings around on the curved saw to make it left or right handed which I think is a nice feature but I haven't tried this. Unfortunately we have now modified the scabbard by throwing a full bag of lowering kit at it when it was stuck half way out of a climbing bag in the truck. This split the scabbard down the seem. A little electrical tape has made it good. The best Ars product I have used are the Secateurs. When I started working for downlands my boss had 4 pairs that he had brought back from Japan. They are by far the best Secateurs I have ever used. The V9 model are the ones we use. Because you couldn't get hold of the ARS ones anywhere I bought a pair of Felcos 2 years ago and they are not in the same league as the ARS ones. The ARS ones are sharper out of the box. Dont bang together. Dont ever need cleaning,oiling or drying of after use. They never go rusty and you can cut through bigger pieces with them. They also give really clean pruning cuts. I love them. I find them such a pleasure to use that I think they help with the quality of the pruning job I do by putting me in the right frame of mind. Everyone should at least have a go on these. Sorbus: I think you should have some shrubs in pots and branches for people to test the secateurs on at your next show. People couldn't see how good they were without anything to cut them with. I also think you should stock some decent holders for them. Decent Secys need a nice fancy case that can be clipped to your harness or belt. They need to be designed so the secys dont fall out when you are climbing.

Would be great if the tree is still there. Any Idea on the age of the photo Sean ?

Good find:thumbup1:

Grifola frondosa ?

The ARS saws that sorbus sell are excellent we have had one since june and it is excellent. I prefer it to a zubat. They have a catch so the saw doesnt fall out and you can strap the scabard straight to your leg without a saw pod. There Secatures are also incredable, I found a pair in a garden that we had lost the year before. They had been out in the rain for a year and were probably 4 years old already. I picked them up and they were sharper and nicer to use then any of the felcos we had with us.

I think it works by detecting trace amounts of signature chemicals produced by fungal respiration. Due to the diverse metabolic pathways that fungi utilise to break down there substrate chemical signatures may be used to ID fungi. You would need to create a library of these chemical signatures to use as a reference. And it may be possible that a probe could be used to collect gas from inside a drilled hole. Its all mega expensive. I think the price of a portable gas mas spectrometer is very high. This is all a vague memory from a lecture 7 years ago about soil fungi diversity. Many species cant even be cultivated in the lab, so are currently unknown to us.

The shape, colouring and host made me choose my guess, there is not a lot else you can go on from the photos. Is the stem dead or alive ? Were the brackets soft or hard ? What colour is the flesh and what colour is the pore layer ? Can you describe the pores ? Brackets age very differently depending on environmental conditions making them difficult to Id.

Im going to remove my question mark and now say I think it is a Piptorus betulinus. Certanly not a phelinus:001_tt2:

Gas mass spectrometry can be used to Identify fungi in soils why not in wood ?

Cool tree Tully. Big old Piptoporus betulinus ?

Sycamore is on footpath at bottom of castle hill ? The trees fate......... Re inspect in a year.

Just write a big "DO NOT SCALE FROM THIS DRAWING" on anything you produce.

I have had a go footlocking with a shunt on a double line and also set it up as an ascender for a RADs system with my cinch. It works in both these applications especially in the RADS setup. I have never used it at work. I dont think its really designed to add any friction on descent. Are you using it to descend free hanging ropes or just for branch walking ? Do you have to add a friction device below the shunt ?