1. Launching a 50-60 ft top with a tight tagline below your cut? Do I really need to explain why this is a bad idea, and do you really need to continue defending the indefensible? You had some lapses in judgment, errors in execution, and got lucky on this one. We have all been there buddy, so it might be time to own it, learn what you can, and move on.
I honestly wouldn't be asking if I didn't want an answer..
If the tree is getting pulled to 6 o'clock with the tag line, and the tree was being felled to 9 o'clock, the push back would be to 3 o'clock, and the tag line would be perpendicular to the direction of fall, and I would think the tag line wouldn't have much effect, either counter or for the push back.
If the tag line is pilling to 3 o'clock and the the fall is to 9 and therefore the push back is to 3, I would think that the by pre-loading the tree to 3, the push back would be reduced because the "stretch" has been taken out of the system. The thinking there being that the truck is going to put a lot more force on the tree than the push back, and therefore the tree will already be pulled back to the point where it doesn't have a lot more room to move.
On the other hand , that may not be correct because the force of the push back would add to the force of the pull line and maybe the movement back would be greater with the total force, even with the spring-loaded effect.
#2. Doing so doesn’t allow the natural pushback and rebound process to happen, which as you learned, can bring a large amount of unpredictability and added danger. Do I really need to continue?
There is no such thing as unpredictability in tree work. Ever tree that has ever been cut obeys the laws of physics perfectly. These immutable laws offer complete predictability if one understands them. What you call unpredictability is simply a lack of knowledge.
Dent stopped teaching the swing Dutchman because he found it too "unpredictable" to teach. I have found that sometimes the hinges hold well and sometimes they blow up in an instant and the tree is lost to the side weight. Rather than give up and say it's too "unpredictable", I try to figure it out. Why does it work on this tree and fail on that... There are a lot of factors at play. I may not ever get all the factors dialed in, but at least I'm trying and experimenting and watching videos in slow motion to try to understand. I feel very comfortable using the cut in low risk scenarios.
And that's why I wish I had the POV video of this tulip top. It would be a great piece of info to learn and teach from. I AM still waiting to get my hands on the video of the top going that was taken from the ground. Everything is moving so fast from what I did see that it really needs to be slowed and carefully analyzed. Even then it's a bad camera angle.
One of the things I'm trying to understand is why did the top come back at the bucket. I thought I was originally was falling the top perpendicular to the path of the bucket. When got up there I changed the direction of the lay slightly, maybe 10-5 degrees. Certainly not enough to get the push back to move directly towards the bucket. The only thing I can think of that may have chnaged the direction of the push back was another lower limb on the interfering tulip. Once the branch of the two had cleared, there was a fork in the limb on the other tulip and this lower wing of that limb was clearly going to get brushed. I knew it wasn't going to be able to stop the top, but it may have deflected the angle of the top's fall enough to change the direction of the push back.
If that is possible and I think that's what happened here, I'm guessing you would have seen it somewhere along the way during your 40 years of blowing tops.. Have you?
