Thanks for emailing me about this Daniel; guess i don't get out much anymore.. i prefer not quiet balance point / cg hitch point. i mostly want a determined, calculable dip on far end. As far as a straight line efficiency; there is the same amount of work for the machine to do; only here we are taking less straightline, but still binding all that travel into target achievemeant; so no loss; just strategic trade.. i've liked this so much, that i'd place a Round turn around the support redirect, and have another line to sweat that open to leverage pretension, then use this strategy for even more pretension. Lots more graceful movemeant/ ballet from load moving lightly around, responding slowly and buffered. Even the head fall after tearoff is buffered by a now integrated ballast..
i think of stretching wood fibre in hinge, as similar to stretching rope fiber; each creates tension,that can give support and steering, with the tension force. If you pretighten enough, you can get a lower impact to rope fiber when you hand off load to it. We can easily do this especially in lighter work, lower friction redirect as support and/or leveraged pretension device (GRCS etc.).
If we pretension what we can, then slowly lay over load on hinge, load has less drop at tearoff. Then it is up to rope tension for rest. But, also, the further the hitchpoint is from the hinge (hinge as pivot), the more distance that hitched rope will get stretched. So, pretension by hand or device becomes pretension 1 and by this action on the hinge becomes the finishing pretensioning. So, there is more line tension at tearoff (and also before that can help with steering load). For, in this scenario/imagery model; the distance from the hinge to the FIRST hitching (preceding marl etc.) becomes a lever, that the cg of the load can tighten the line thru. Note, this won't work as well with a narrow facing; for that can limit travel on hinge. Now see less drop distance at tearoff, and more line tension; both, helping to limit impacting on the rope systems and it's support/anchors. So, think of the hinge as a 2nd (dispensable) hitchpoint, to steer and support load. Also, notice, in the pre-pre tensioning the less friction at support redirect, the more we can pretension. But, when we are in final pretension using hinge, more friction at support redirect, isolates less rope that gets the same stretching for pretensioning, thus, gives more tension. Also, With less support/ redirect friction we can take more impact/ have more rubberband to handle it. But, if support is closer to the load, and has high friction; impact has more impact, but if worked right with these methods, is less likely. For the short (by length and isolation by friction buffer) can get super tight, to give more support and steering, for less / almost Zer0 impacting. So, support/redirect friction can be very important to figuring out what kind of strategy to use.
MTL:Self Tightening Rig
This, tightening the line tension automatically before tearoff if load moves away from the support, can work so well, you can orchestrate it to pull very hard sideways (to pull off from over obstacle/roof etc.); by going the wrong way/ long way around(giving more leveraged distance to pretighten). Also,if head were to become hung, or that is the way you found it to start, more towards balance point/ cg gives length on butt end, that weight can be added too or impacted (at leveraged distance multiplier from hitchpoint) to help lift head out of lock. If limb is horizontal pointing at center of clock; and support rig is at 2; we can tip to 5 and steer over and pretighten too. But, we can pretighten the line harder, to pull harder sideways, by moving the load more away from support, rather than towards it (horizontally). We can, rig to support at 2, but, begin to hinge down towards 7 o'clock; then rope tightens more (because you aren't just moving farther away from support on axisY only, but also hitch[point on load moves farther away from support on axisX now too. Under the right conditions, this can give a very hard pull straight across from 7 to 5; all on a tight rope and hinge as the 2 support points.
Then, as before, when we have used the hinge point like it was another rope, as a rope as long as possible, and smoothly handed over the load to the rigging rope, we then can cut thru the short fiber 'rope'/hinge, and proceed as usual. But, we are playing with power, we want to all ways and always to instantly provide the equal and opposite workable force of the tension support in the rope-the relief of tension! If the rope pulls up, over, back towards climber etc. tooo hard, being able to releive tension sum, can be as important as providing tension/support etc.
MTL: Rock Around The Clock Strategy
A few more things a hitchpoint closer to CG gives, is more ballast to the head whent he pivot does switch from the hinge to the line (pivot determined by which device is most loaded, then rest of mehcnix of length and nagle from that pivot point. Also, more clearance underneath by virtue of some of the length you've taken is above hitchpoint, it isn't all below hitchpoint. This extra clearance, along with lower impacting (that gives less drop) can help to ballet out even more magic.
Even having a rope angle to pull back into hinge can help, but can be dangerous to climber if something goes wrong. So, goes with the Goldilox principal as all things with power; has the 2 equal and opposites, but 3 power positions: not enough, just right and way tooo much!
