TeeDee-
I'm not using a ridgeline for the hammock. I have a ridgeline under my tarp which serves all the auxiliary purposes a hammock ridgeline serves, but not the main one of setting the length of the suspension. I use the ridgeline under the tarp to take the stress off the sewn in center tabs. At least on my JRB tarp I saw these start to pull away under strain; so now the tarp hangs over a ridgeline and is positioned on it and held in place by prussiks attached to it, and those tabs. Makes it very easy to center the tarp over the hammock, once hung, which is particularly important with my bridge hammock under a MacCat Deluxe, because it Just Fits if I'm careful.
So, no ridgeline for the hammock. Means that when I hang it I do little adjustments here and there to the suspension lines and the position of the tree huggers to get the hammock hung where I want it, at the height I want it, with enough tension on the suspension to give me a flat lay. That's where I use small adjustments. And, when in the hammock I feel that it isn't level, out I go to adjust a little more.
On the marlin spike...my "default" suspension these days does the following.
1. Put marlin spike hitched toggles on the tree webbings.
2. Take cord from hammock, loop over the toggles at the tree, bring the standing end back, and form
another marlin spike hitch on the line. The toggle on that one simply serves to fasten the bottom of the loop just made over the toggle at the tree. This second hitch is easy and fast to form, easy and fast to undo, easy and fast to redo after changing the length of the cord from hammock to toggle-at-tree. I demo'ed this in
one of my suspension tutorial videos starting at around 7:50.
Finally, I've made up both UCRs and whoopie slings. The observation about relative difficulty in increasing the loop size applies of course only to the whoopie sling.
Grizz
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