by Dwight Livingston » May 24, 2010 1:04 pm
Rickster
The 8-inch rack will give you less opportunity to reduce friction than a 10-inch rack. It may work fine with clean or thin ropes but give you trouble on a fat dirty rope and force you to feed the rope, which is best to avoid.
You can mount your rack to allow you to reduce friction to a minimum. To do so, attach the rack to your d-ring using a quicklink (or a locking 'biner if you are in that camp.) Attach it so that the tail of the rope enters the bottom of your rack from the far side. If you are right handed, you will probably have to reinstall the hyperbar so that it is on the right side when attached this way.
To reduce friction to a minimum while on rappel, take the tail off the hyperbar and spread the bars as far a possible. Don't place the tail over your hip, but rather let it feed up between your legs. With the setup described above, the tail will not have to curl around the rack frame. This avoids a significant amount of friction. I use this configuration on some of our perminent rigs, and it allows me to get down without feeding.
Recently I described this all to Carroll Bassett. He had not explored this issue, which explains way new racks are assembled as they are.
Dwight
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Dwight Livingston