Rope Runner Problems

Thanks for your response, Dave. If I had to venture a guess as to why yoyoman did it, I'd say he's not advocating doing it on a steady basis, as a routine way of operating as a climber. It has more to do with understanding how a piece of gear works under all conditions, and in an emergency situation.

I believe yoyoman is an aviator, and folks in that line of work frequently have to practice "what-if" scenarios, so that they know what they should do in any set of circumstances. So when he did what he did using the Rope Runner with a disabled spring, I feel certain he was highly aware and focused on how the Rope Runner was behaving. If he had not done the exercise, he would not have the knowledge that goes with it. He was trying to understand the limits of the equipment.

I would not want to use a Rope Runner on a normal basis that had a spring that was malfunctioning. I think fitz only did it because he did not yet know what "normal" is for the Rope Runner. If I were him, and Kevin Bingham himself told me that the way his Rope Runner was acting was not normal, I would stop using it until I had a fix that worked or a replacement device.

It would be nice to have a backup, and now that I mention that possibility, it occurs to me that that is how I climb most of the time, anyway. I use two ropes and two systems almost all the time, for safety and for ease of positioning. If I were going to do this exercise, just so that I'm understanding how to make the Rope Runner work for me if I'm up in the tree and experience a spring failure, I would try to have a second system that self tends, which would catch me in the event of a problem. It would be nice to have a fairly soft spot below me, also.

I'm probably a long way away from owning a Rope Runner at the present time, but I'll keep your words of caution in mind if and when I ever do manage to own one.

Thanks again for your help and concern.

Tim
 
I agree with boner and DMC.. This is crazy talk. It is much akin to foot locking with out a prussik or one that doesn't work set. One slip and down you go.
 
TimBr said:
I wish I could take credit for the idea of utilizing the Rope Runner with a non-working spring, but it is yoyoman who deserves credit for the idea. I'm going to try to post a link to another thread in which I discussed the issue, but also posted a link at the bottom of the post to a video yoyoman produced in which he demonstrates how to do this. His video may have saved fitz's life, because yoyoman taught him how to handle a Rope Runner with no spring tension. Here's the link.

http://www.treebuzz.com/forum/threads/whos-a-self-taught-climber.29249/page-4#post-436411

Thanks in advance for your time, concern, and any further input you care to provide. I welcome it all.

Tim
Click to expand...

I have not been following this thread close enough to see the implications that are developing and want to clarify.

The title of that video is
"Importance of the spring on the Rope Runner"

I will make a note on that video to make sure I'm not advocating USING the runner without a spring. It has been a while since I made that video and it is interesting to go back and watch it and see where this line of thinking comes from.

This video demonstrates the importance of that spring setting the runner and in the video I'm demonstrating that the modified frog walker sets the bird on every step up the rope with or without the spring BUT again, I did not mean to imply using it without the spring.

YES, to use the Runner without a spring for anything other than to demonstrate how important it is, would not be safe.

and also, yes, practice the "what ifs", get the muscle memory on board with those, it has saved my butt in the sky both over a wing and on a rope!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and this is just me.....but I have to understand how things work, that is a passion of mine, it also has keep me alive because I can do some pretty stupid things.

In fact that modified frog walker is a great system preparatory to a pure walker system. No tending is required, no bungees, no SAKA and the quickest turn form ascent to descent of any system out there. (that is what I would like to come away from that video, not that the Runner can work without a spring.

So....know how the Runner works, keep the spring at a proper tension to engage the bird but not inhibit the assent, and practice "what ifs".

Now excuse me, I must go place a Tree-O-Cache bucket in a tall Poplar. (Tokyo Japan ;))



 
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Yoyoman said:

"This video demonstrates the importance of that spring setting the runner and in the video I'm demonstrating that the modified frog walker sets the bird on every step up the rope with or without the spring BUT again, I did not mean to imply using it without the spring."


yoyoman said:
and also, yes, practice the "what ifs", get the muscle memory on board with those, it has saved my butt in the sky both over a wing and on a rope!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and this is just me.....but I have to understand how things work, that is a passion of mine, it also has (kept) me alive because I can do some pretty stupid things.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, I thought your video was very clear about the reason for doing what you were doing, and I never for a second thought that you were advocating the use of the Rope Runner on a routine basis without a spring. I understood (I felt) exactly what your motivation was, as expressed in the second paragraph quoted above.

It was the action of your right hand pushing up on the bird that caused the Rope Runner to be set each and every time you took a step up, if I'm understanding things correctly. Muscle memory development is exactly the point. I believe that if a climber were to develop that habit of use, even when the spring is present and functioning normally, it would be a good thing, and provide a measure of protection against the circumstance of spring failure.

The beginning of your video amply demonstrates, repeatedly, what can happen when the Rope Runner is not properly set.

In summation, I thank you for producing that video and posting it. It demonstrated perfectly the points you were trying to make, and I do not believe that there is any confusion on my part as to your points. Your statements were very clear, and I do not believe anyone viewing your video, even before you added your recent disclaimer, would have thought you were advocating the use of the Rope Runner on a routine basis without a working spring. All you managed to do was to show in the clearest way possible, just how it is that the Rope Runner does what it does.

Thank you for leaving the video up for others to learn from.

Sincerely,

Tim
 
monkeylove said:
Nick, I see TS has a Blue version now. Same as above or something major? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Hey, monkeylove, thanks for this heads up about the change in color of the Rope Runner sold by TreeStuff currently, and the possibility of other small changes to the device.

It has me wondering if the manufacturer is using the color of the device as a means of easily identifying which version it is. I guess I'm wondering why it is that they cannot take requests and allow the customers to choose the color that they would like their Rope Runner to be. Some of the earliest ones produced by Kevin Bingham were just gorgeous in appearance. I think the ones I'm thinking of might have been light blue in color.

Maybe it is just a question of all the work involved in setting things up to be painted, and needing to bang out a bunch of one color just to make all of the setup work worth the while.

It might also be such a small market that they don't want to produce large numbers of different colors not knowing whether or not they will sell.

Just like anything, though, I can't help but think that the color of a thing affects people's willingness to buy it. Just like choosing the color of an automobile. Bright green might just sit on the lot, while metallic blue sells like hotcakes. Same car exactly, except for the color.

I think Kevin even went to the trouble of custom engraving some of the ones he produced for particular individuals, which was really cool of him to do.

I guess that is just my thought on the issue. It would be cool if some method was arranged to allow a climber to place an order for a specific color selected from a drop-down menu. Now that I think of it, I've seen a similar feature on Amazon in which a piece of hardware is available in multiple colors. You float your mouse cursor over each little picture, and you get to see what each one looks like in a larger image. Sometimes the price even varies, with less popular colors selling for less money.

I'm talking here about customers who are willing to wait for their Rope Runners to be produced, who are not in a blinding hurry to own it. They might even be able to charge a fee for such a service, just to make it in their financial interest to take these extra measures to please their customers. By doing so, they'd automatically be finding out what the most popular colors are, which might allow them to increase sales to the majority that do not wish to wait for it.

This is all probably not feasible, but I think it would be cool if it could all be worked out.

Tim
 
Just from looking at the pictures it appears they have gone back to the pinned body stop. The black one was machined from the body, the gold was pinned.
 
I'm going to have to start trying to save the photographs of the various versions of the Rope Runner in order to be able to compare them. Once a newer version comes out you no longer have access to the photos of the older ones anymore. Now that I've said that, maybe a Bing image search would reveal all of the various models.

Tim
 
I have tried to replicate this with CMI gold RR and the newest black RR, and neither of them were defective.

I don't remember having this issue with the original Detroit blue RR either.

The gold one we received was defective when we received it--the axle spring is not tight enough to pull the bird into the proper orientation. It hasn't yet been decided whether to send it back (it's under warranty) or attempt to fix it.
 
I have been toying with tenders for the RR recently, and find that I don't like the little eye-to-eye rope tender connections because they are bulky and difficult to keep evenly balanced on both sides of the carabiner. So, here is a picture of a simple alternative that I think works better. This is so simple that I am sure I am not the first to think of it, but I would be interested to know if other climbers are using a similar tender connection, or maybe even something more elegant? And please let me know if you see any safety implications with this method of connecting to the RR.
 

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