Suspending from a rope?

[gfortune]

Yeah, for a first post that was pretty ballsy. LOL

Maybe he'll follow up at some point? /shrug

[Secondmouse]

Yeah, for a first post that was pretty ballsy. LOL

crickets. looks like a drive-by poster....

[DelayedNeutron]

ok, you've got my attention...

He may have your attention, but a firm grasp on physics and vector mechanics has he not.

[RotalSnart]

Depending on the size/strenth of the rope used,,,hmm,,, i guess you could use knots in the rope to keep from sliding,, we won't know untill you try it.,,Let us know.

I would not knot the rope, I'd use a marlinspike hitches and either attach the carabiners there, or run another piece of rope through the hitch loop and rig my suspension from that.

I like the general idea.

[GadgetUK437]

Sorry, I know this chart is used by alot of people but the physics, triangular sin/cosin geometry, and the x^2 + y^2 = hyp^2 are all wrong....I'll track down that chart and address the issues there.

Can we breathe yet?
I'll see if I can tempt him out with this,

Figures are for a 50' tree seperation and 72" high anchor points (using zero stretch lines made from unobtanium).
Obviously in the real world the anchors would need to go higher, to account for stretch (or pre-tension the system a fair whack).
A 200lb guy is going to put a 1200lb load on those trees, and with a 6 foot high lever, those trees are gonna suffer.

One, saner, option would be to use the trees as high deviations and anchor the line beyond the trees, at ground level (think suspension bridge).

Another, would be to get a ladder and put those anchor points up real high, to increase to suspension angle. Getting the anchors up at 13' would give a 20 degree angle and reduce the forces to 300lb on each end.

[GadgetUK437]

I have a long distance hang at the front of the house. It is 39' feet from the house to the tree. The anchor on the house is over 14' up and the anchor on the tree is at 11'.

That's when I want a sunny hang, a fair distance from the tree,


If I want to hang in the shade, closer to the tree, I just deviate the line from the high anchor through a lower strap,

[Rain Man]

we used to buy static rope, used for rappelling so no stretch/bounce,...

Rope made for caving is static, not dynamic, for the very reason you don't want stretch.

I heard a funny story once about a caver feeding out 400' of rope from the top of a waterfall in a cave near Chattanooga. When he rappelled down, he had failed to feed out enough rope, so he swung to a ledge and got his buddies above to feed out another 40' to reach the bottom. When he connected his rappel rack to the rope and stepped off the ledge, it stretched 10% as designed and he bounced off the bottom of the cave floor! No injuries that I knew of. But lesson learned. LOL

If rock climbing, you want that stretch or you risk being cut in two by the rope.

[Secondmouse]

...If rock climbing, you want that stretch or you risk being cut in two by the rope.

being cut in two?.. that would have to be some freakish big fall as the rope is connected to a harness, not tied around your waist.

haha, but yes, you do want a dynamic rope for climbing belayed where you set your protection. however, you can get by with a static rope for top-roping. if you and your belayer are on good terms, that is...

[PDA]

There seem to be no end to people who deny basic physics and euclidian trigonometry. This chart was posted on WHiteblaze maybe ten years ago,and is the basis for the ultimate hang calculator.HammockPhysics_original.jpg

The same people probably deny climate change.

[ObiJohn]

I don't see how 200 lbs hanging from a hammock between two trees can put more than 200 lbs of force on the trees, total. Now, the vector of the forces changes, i.e., it's not straight down, but has some horizontal component, but the sum of the horizontal and vertical vectors can't be greater than the original weight. (This assumes that the rope isn't so tight that it is putting an additional force on the trees... think of this as the same as having a lightweight but perfectly stiff metal rod that runs 2" less than the distance between the two trees and is secured to two tree straps with carabiners.)

My plan is to run a line between the two trees, with knots 11' apart, each knot 5.5' from the midpoint. The line will have a little slack, but not much, and I'll use tree straps at the trees themselves. I'll suspend the hammock from just outside the knots using the knots to eliminate slippage. I've been traveling overseas for much of the time since my first post, and recovering from a serious bicycle accident with broken bones for much of the rest of the time, but I'll give this a try in the next month (in FL, in CA next week, in India for the next 2 weeks, then back to CA for a week before Christmas).