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landgolier
Feb 22, 2006, 11:42 PM
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In reply to: would using dynamic cord for an equalizing anchor (sliding x, gordo, equalette) be a help in the proposed case of hanging belay, climber falls ripping a piece out of the belay, then the belayer falls with the extension, applying a second force to the anchor. We now see more clearly the need to tie in with the rope and not clip in, but this belayer fall would be better cushioned with dynamic cord holding everything together. With that in mind, does anyone know if 8-9mm dynamic rope is sold by the foot anywhere? Sidenote - how/where can screamers be used as a part of the belay most effectively?
I brought it up before, but bluewater makes dynamic prusik in 7 and 8 mil. I can't find an online dealer that lists it, but it's often sold as regular accessory cord, so call some places up and have them read the sides of their spools. No lead line type data out there for it, but it does test to 2800 lbs.
On the same principle, I'm not a big fan of the kevlar 5.5 cords for cordelettes (or for that matter for Largo's new thing, which uses the same loop of cord). I know plenty of people use it, but I want some boing in my system. Also, any testing of big loads on clove hitches in that stuff? It strikes me that if it can worm its way out of a double fish, it can problably slip as a clove. Actually good up to a point I guess for the duolette, but if it chops the whole sheath and gets real slippery it could turn into an ADT.
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vivalargo
Feb 23, 2006, 12:05 AM
Post #227 of 915
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I wish I could answer all these questions but I just don't have time, and anyhow, folks from the ranks seem to be rounding this thing into shape, which is a great thing.
But let me say this: I'm not a fan of using static cord for much of anything save as sling for Cams. It was originally invented for military use with static loads, not for use in a system that requires give and flex in the system.
Next, I truly believe that tying into the anchor with anything but the climbing rope is a huge gamble and introduces all kinds of potential dangers.
Lastly, remember that a cordelette was originally invented and widely used because it was faster and easier to rig than tying off all the placements with the rope--ONCE YOU GOT USED TO USING IT. Same thing with the equalette, et al. You might have to fiddle with these systems a bit before you get them totally dialed but once you do they are not only very fast and easy to set up, but they test out very well.
JL
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gordo
Feb 23, 2006, 1:02 AM
Post #228 of 915
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In reply to: ok. the limited sliding x has three loops - one end clipped to piece A the other clipped to piece B. The one in the middle has the powerpoint. cut one of the middle strands and you are still ok, so it is sort of redundant, but if either piece pulls out, there is total failure since the powerpoint is not inside the middle loop, it is just resting on it. Make sense?
Jeremy...with all the stuff flying around in this thread my head is spinning. I'm going to re-read the whole thing. But I had to grab this out. You've missed the whole point of the sliding x. The Power point Biner (s) never "rests" on the center section..EVER!!!!!!! The sliding x is only a sliding x if the biner is hooked over one part and through the twisted loop of the other. I have a feeling you know this...but it's so fundamental to this conversation I had to point it out. Cut any one point on the "limited sliding x" and the anchor stays put! It extends, but doesn't fail.
FWIW I still use Sliding x's a lot...I do 2, right on top of each other, with 1 power point per sling, whenever I'm faced with 2 bomber bolts that I am belaying/TR'n off of.
Now I have a stupid question. I use 6 and 7 mm cord bought from varrious climbing shops for my cordolettes. I have no idea if they are dynamic or not...in 20 feet do you think I can feel it? Furthermore...we know the "dynamic"ness of our system is based on the amount of rope out...ie. 100 foot out VERY bouncy...10 foot out, not so bouncy. So how much good are we really going to get out of the 5 feet or so (based on tying off a 20 foot or so cord to varrious pieces) of dynamic cord? Or for that matter, tying off to the anchor with the rope, and maybe having 2 feet of 10mm dynamic rope? Not much stretch there :) The Screemer as Jeremy sugested might be the answer!
I went out to the local Crag today. Did up several rigs. Most were good to excelent. I found in real life, given horizontal placements, the Gordolette did very well. It equalized over a much larger range than I thought, way more than a 30 foot toprope would ever cover, even with a seriously wandering route. I can rig it in under 2 minutes, so I just don't see it as complicated or difficult. But, I'm partial :lol:
I used the Equalette and Quad also. In a vertical or really weird situation, it's the way to go. Given real world, all trad pro, some good, some just OK, I'm thining the Equalette is my new system. I ALWAYS carry a Cordolette (I thought everybody did :?: ) so this is not any new gear.
Anyway...I'm still planning to use the gear I always have, just rigged a little better. I'll be using it Sunday as a matter of fact, so we'll se how it goes in the real world :D
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jimfix
Feb 23, 2006, 3:29 AM
Post #230 of 915
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In reply to: Love to hear comments on these ideas, maybe a name for this baby .....
It's effectively the sliding x, nothing new there. I wonder how many people are going to jump up and down over clipping biner to biner...
You know, when that puppy "shock loads", your in for some killer microfractures :wink:
Seriously though, looks like a good rig.
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curt
Feb 23, 2006, 3:31 AM
Post #231 of 915
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No doubt someone will bitch about the carabiner on carabiner contact, but it looks pretty interesting to me.
Curt
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tradklime
Feb 23, 2006, 3:45 AM
Post #232 of 915
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I use biner to biner (locking) connections on power points all the time, I don't see any issues, unless the biner starts getting loading at steep angles.
Did I miss the post that explained the "quad" and the "equalette". I get the duo glide concept. I think I missed the others being explained...
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moose_droppings
Feb 23, 2006, 3:48 AM
Post #233 of 915
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Charlesjim,
The outside 2 legs on the 4 leg anchor setup are approaching a 90 degree angle, any concern there. Also, how tall is that over all, with the addition of some pro?. Just wondering, in my brainstorming ideas, and trying them, I've come across a couple that by the time I put in some pieces and build on down, they get to be quite long. On a wall I'd need a daisy to work my way down building it. Your idea looks quite promising, and the biner on biner doesn't bother me much. good work
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gordo
Feb 23, 2006, 4:00 AM
Post #234 of 915
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Interesting Charles. Pretty simple and meets all my requirements. I'll fool with that one myself, could be the solution from the simplicty point of view.
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charlesjmm
Feb 23, 2006, 4:10 AM
Post #235 of 915
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- If biner to biner contact is a concern, you can always insert a small sling between the biners and create something like a quickdraw.
- Regarding the size of the rig, it will depend on 1) spacing between placements 2) Length of the cordelette used. Pictured anchor measures 74cm top to botom.
- The angle between legs will depend on how placements are setup; as more placements are included, the outer legs are forced to be at a wider angle. You will have to find that middle point that satisfies your taste.
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flyinglow
Feb 23, 2006, 4:14 AM
Post #236 of 915
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Nice one Charles.
I was playing with something like that as well, but i used a single biner looped through all the x-points instead of multiple biners hooked into a master biner. You could also double the master biner for redundancy. It doesn't look as pretty my way, but req's less biners and lessens the possibility of gate loading(3-way loading) your master point i think. and no metal-metal contact.
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healyje
Feb 23, 2006, 4:25 AM
Post #237 of 915
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In reply to: Did I miss the post that explained the "quad" and the "equalette". I get the duo glide concept. I think I missed the others being explained...
Tradklime, join the ranks of the easily confused. It has been going by pretty fast and when I'm programming I get into high skim mode and can miss such things. The Duo Glide (aka Equalette) are the same thing and I miss that myself until I did a closer re-read. The quad was never described but is essentially a folded-over, doubled Equalette.
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healyje
Feb 23, 2006, 4:35 AM
Post #238 of 915
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Charles,
That's a really good run at it, but I fall into the "that's a limited, sliding-X application" camp. I'd also just put the wide end of that fat Petzl locker directly through the rope loops. Probably from being concerned about crossloading from all the soloing I do I am just not at all comfortable with biner-on-biner connections like that. I'd definitely put a tripled-over 12" dynemma sling between the loop biners and the powerpoint locker if you wanted to go that route. Where I think you are adding value here with that design is the leg-centered limiting knots. The distance between the knots is well-suited to provide good equalization across multiple sliding-X's yet short enough to not worry excessively about "shock loading".
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flyinglow
Feb 23, 2006, 4:39 AM
Post #239 of 915
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downside to the single biner setup, if you blow two pieces on a three piece anchor, it extends a lot. I'm leaning back towards the gordolette now that i've spent a few more minutes playing with it.
sliding x, three pieces... hmm... would that make charles' setup a triple-X?
edit to add:
i was playing with a fully equalizing setup, and not exactly what charles has pictured. it looks like charles' would load heavier on the center piece/pieces than on the outer legs. what i was trying to go for was more like a sliding x but with 3 equal legs. it would equalize forces nicely, but is a royal pain in the A55 to stop it from extending. back to the drawing board.
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charlesjmm
Feb 23, 2006, 4:52 AM
Post #240 of 915
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In reply to: Nice one Charles. I was playing with something like that as well, but i used a single biner looped through all the x-points instead of multiple biners hooked into a master biner. You could also double the master biner for redundancy. It doesn't look as pretty my way, but req's less biners and lessens the possibility of gate loading(3-way loading) your master point i think. and no metal-metal contact.
Thanks Flyinglow,
I have also tried a single biner through all the x-points, but it seemed to me that friction amongst adjacent cords will reduce equalization, specially with 4 or more placements. If one biner is all you´ve got, then that´s the way to go....
Contact between biners can be eliminated by introducing an interface sling.
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healyje
Feb 23, 2006, 4:56 AM
Post #241 of 915
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In reply to: downside to the single biner setup, if you blow two pieces on a three piece anchor, it extends a lot. I'm leaning back towards the gordolette now that i've spent a few more minutes playing with it.
I can't see how one biner vs. three makes any difference in the length of the extension in the case of the failure of N-1 anchors in the setup.
In reply to: I was playing with a fully equalizing setup, and not exactly what charles has pictured. it looks like charles' would load heavier on the center piece/pieces than on the outer legs..
The principal weakness of the multiple sliding-X design is that once you get more than three anchor points you can't easily equalize across the multiple X units anymore. At that point it starts acting more like a cordalette.
In reply to: what i was trying to go for was more like a sliding x but with 3 equal legs. it would equalize forces nicely, but is a royal pain in the A55 to stop it from extending. back to the drawing board.
Someone early one was talking about a three point sliding-X but I don't think they posted up any pictures.
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jimdavis
Feb 23, 2006, 5:24 AM
Post #242 of 915
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In reply to: No doubt someone will b---- about the carabiner on carabiner contact, but it looks pretty interesting to me. Curt
Won't be me this time...
I will bitch about all those biners being unlocked though! :lol:
Jim
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cracklover
Feb 23, 2006, 5:32 AM
Post #243 of 915
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Cool, Charles! Can we call it the Triple X?
Couple notes.
1 - When the middle leg fails, you extend to the limiter knots on either side, and no longer have a self-equalizing system. In other words, if, in real life, the middle piece were to fail, all the force would be transferred to one of the two remaining pieces - whichever was closer to the direction of force.
2 - Sucks up a *lot* of cord. One of the nice things about the old cordelette configuration, and many of the new cord configurations, is that you can connect fairly widely distributed pieces of pro. Using your crossed cord system, you'd definitely need to throw some slings in there to extend an arm or two more often than not.
And yes - if it Charles' triple-x all comes together to one biner, there's a lot of friction and it doesn't like to equalize as well.
GO
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hemp22
Feb 23, 2006, 5:33 AM
Post #244 of 915
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Hey all, excellent thread so far.
Much thanks to JL and his colleagues for all the testing that they're doing, and good work by the folks posting some cool new anchor ideas (gordo, moose, dr_monkey, charlesjmm, etc).
In reply to: In reply to: Did I miss the post that explained the "quad" and the "equalette". I get the duo glide concept. I think I missed the others being explained... Tradklime, join the ranks of the easily confused. It has been going by pretty fast and when I'm programming I get into high skim mode and can miss such things. The Duo Glide (aka Equalette) are the same thing and I miss that myself until I did a closer re-read. The quad was never described but is essentially a folded-over, doubled Equalette.
Joseph - thanks for clearing that up somewhat. I'm glad that I'm not the only one that was starting to get a little lost with all the different names, etc.
So is the Duo Glide / Equalette the system that you posted a diagram of several pages back? (2 limiter knots, 2 lockers, 2-4 clove hitches, and excess cord left dangling)? I played around with that setup a bit, and I like it for simplicity. But it seemed to me like if the direction of pull changes more than a few degrees, it starts to equalize between only 2 of the placements, even if you have 4 of them. (of course, I might still be setting it up wrong - more pictures of JL's systems would help)
As for the different alpine equalizer style setups that folks have come up with, I think they are all pretty cool, but of course all have their pros and cons. The main bugs I saw with them have been covered before: they are limited to 3 placeents, and also all become finicky when putting all 3 placements in a vertical crack. But, for ease of use between them, I decided that I actually liked the one that was suggested by Dr.Monkey a while back (It's a combination of healyje's AE w/ the double-loop Fig 8 powerpoint, and of the gordolette, but with only 2 of the strands needing to be cloved together w/ a locker). The powerpoint knot could stay in place, so there were only 2 clove hitches to tie w/ this one. (although in the very slight chance that the loop coming out of the top of the Fig 8 is cut, then there's significant extension)
I just tried the Charles rig too, and as soon as the placements are moved you have to relocate most of the limiter knots, so getting it dialed in seemed a bit time-consuming. And yeah, I'd try to go w/ just one locker so that you don't need an extra locker for every anchor piece that you want to add. A good system for simplicity will be one that requires the same gear regardless of how many anchor points you have.
Also, gordo or someone asked about using slingage to build these things. I have a 10mm x ~12 ft sewn dyneema sling (Wild Country, I think), and have used it for trying some of these systems too. I actually think it works great for tying the cloves & limiters. It's more flexible that stiff cord, and the cloves seem to hold well as long as you don't have the sling all twisted in the knot. But, from the sound of some of the recent statements, going with dynamic cord in the system might end up being preferable.
All in all, this is great stuff. Keep it coming.
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charlesjmm
Feb 23, 2006, 6:04 AM
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In reply to: Charles, That's a really good run at it, but I fall into the "that's a limited, sliding-X application" camp. I'd also just put the wide end of that fat Petzl locker directly through the rope loops. Probably from being concerned about crossloading from all the soloing I do I am just not at all comfortable with biner-on-biner connections like that. I'd definitely put a tripled-over 12" dynemma sling between the loop biners and the powerpoint locker if you wanted to go that route. Where I think you are adding value here with that design is the leg-centered limiting knots. The distance between the knots is well-suited to provide good equalization across multiple sliding-X's yet short enough to not worry excessively about "shock loading".
Thanks Healyje,
To incorporate your comments in graphic mode, here´s a picture of the revised MULTI-X :
http://i49.photobucket.com/...carlosjmm/MultiX.jpg
The red interface between the biners is a 27kn Bluewater 30cm doubled sling. You could even triple it to reduce the size of the rig....
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healyje
Feb 23, 2006, 6:11 AM
Post #246 of 915
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Charles,
I was thinking of the intermediate sling more in terms of still having the three loop biners. Doing it this way does get you a primary biner with the wide side down as opposed to the narrow end down in the single biner mode.
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jimdavis
Feb 23, 2006, 6:33 AM
Post #247 of 915
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Ok, so i rigged this up.....and I don't see how it equalizes any more than 2 points at a time any better than a pre-equalized cordellette would.
Each leg of that anhor is fixed in length. It is tied off with a clove at the top of each piece, and a limiter knot at the bottem of each side of the anchor. As soon as you move your master point in any direction, you'll only tension 1 leg from each side of the anchor, as the other legs can not adjust their lengths to the movement.
The only advantage I can see over this is that you load 2 pieces instead of 1 (with the pre-equalized cordellette config)...but your still not loading 3 or 4 pieces.
It would seem to me, that the only way we've been able to equalize 4 points is to either have a ton of extension...or to use 2 sets, of 2 piece sliding-x anchors, linked together with 1 big sliding-x (with limiter knots in each leg of each anchor).
We're down to 3 slings, and 3 biners for the slings (or 6, if we're doing the JL style sliding-x thing, I forget the name) then another 4 biners for each piece of pro clipped.
When trying to setup healyje's setup, i found it pretty complicated...a lot of cliping then unclipping, to get those knots in...then going back and adjusting the cloves. Is this something you can get around somehow?
The only other alternative I've seen is with these alpine equalizer-eske setups....with the extension we're trying to get rid of. So, what am I missing here guys?
I haven't tried the crazy-ass-clove-hitch-everything setup....that also seems extreemly complicated. I'll try that next.
Thanks all, and cheers!
Jim
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jimdavis
Feb 23, 2006, 6:50 AM
Post #248 of 915
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Just rigged this up....seemed to offer some great equalization, keep extension to a minimum, and was pretty straight-forward to setup...I'll be playing around with this for a while.
My regular cordellettes got eaten up in a rescue this fall...I only have a shorty cordellette and a WC dyneeme sling (friggin 30 foot loop or something redicilous like that) so I have more than enough length in that beast to rig this thing up.
I like this the most out of anything I've seen on this thread.
Cheers,
Jim
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goodwill
Feb 23, 2006, 8:59 AM
Post #249 of 915
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This is NOT a proper equalizing anchor. It will put twice as much force on the middle piece as it puts on each of the two outer pieces.
It was a post by billl7 yesterday that made a light bulb go on in my head, and I smacked myself in the forehead for not having realized this before: the reason that a sliding X is superior to a knotted cordalette is that (assuming the friction from the biners is negligible) the tension throughout the entire sling is roughly equal. Thus, since there are two strands of the sling going to each piece, the force on each piece is equal to twice that tension. The angles don't affect this. (The angles still determine the fraction of the downward force that is placed on each piece, of course; but the same force will be applied to each piece.) This carries over to most of the three-piece alpine equalizer style setups that we've seen, though in many of them, the friction is worse.
With a knotted cordalette (assume just two pieces for simplicity) the force on the pieces will be equal only if the angle between the pieces is perfectly bisected by the line of the downward force (from the falling climber). If the direction of this force is a little different than expected, or if one arm of the cordalette stretches a little more than the other, then the force will no longer bisect this angle, and the pieces will no longer be loaded equally. Moreover, the smaller the angle between the two pieces was to begin with, the more drastically a small change will affect the force distribution. This is the theoretical reason for the results of John's testing. It all makes perfect sense to me now, and I can't believe I never thought of it before. (Smacking myself in the head again. :roll: )
Anyway, getting back to Charles' rig, note that there are four strands going to the middle piece, and only two going to each outer piece. This means that the force on the middle piece will be twice as great as on the outer pieces, as I said above. Couple this with the fact that, as cracklover mentioned above, if the middle piece blows (and in some sense it's the one most likely to) the system is no longer self-equalizing. Sorry Charles, but I'd never use it for these reasons. A partial fix for this might be to loop the outer arms through the biners at the top and back down to the power point biner, so that you'd have four strands on each piece, but now this thing would eat up even more cord.
Incidentally, I also am still confused about how exactly the equalette (duoglide) and the quad are rigged. I've been following this thread very closely for the last several days, and I didn't see anyone cover this exactly. I've also been building most of the proposed systems and trying them out, but I haven't found one yet that I'd really stick with. So I really want to know more about the equalette and quad, as they sound very promising.
This has been an awesome and incredibly informative thread. Thanks to everyone for their input. When designing self-equalizing systems, try to keep in mind the principle I mentioned above, and note that to get good equalization it relies (as John has mentioned several times) on having very little friction. This is crucial not just so that the anchor will align itself in the correct direction (the self-equalizing property) but so that the tension is (roughly) equal throughout all parts of the sling, and thus the force on each piece is roughly the same. With most of the alpine-equalizer setups, there seems to be a lot of friction.
Will
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healyje
Feb 23, 2006, 10:25 AM
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In reply to: As for the different alpine equalizer style setups that folks have come up with, I think they are all pretty cool, but of course all have their pros and cons. The main bugs I saw with them have been covered before: they are limited to 3 placeents, and also all become finicky when putting all 3 placements in a vertical crack.
You could put in a third equalization biner and cover four anchors - it's an N (anchor points) - 1 (biners) function with the friction going up pretty fast with N.
In reply to: When trying to setup healyje's setup, i found it pretty complicated...a lot of cliping then unclipping, to get those knots in...then going back and adjusting the cloves. Is this something you can get around somehow?
Jim (and hemp22, goodwill), that rig in the white diagram with my name on it in your post above is the Dou Glide (aka Equalette). Read John's post at the bottom of page 6 in this thread for his comments on how to set it up. He is saying their tests show this to be superior to cordalettes.
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