Cavechat.org

paul wrote:As a matter of interest, the current issue of the British caving magazine, Descent has an article about SRT efficiency with respect to body shape. I'm not sure how easy it is to obtain the magazine in the US though.

The same article is available in Nylon Highway 53, along with two follow-up articles.
http://www.caves.org/section/vertical/nh/pdfs/nh53.pdf Entire issue
http://www.caves.org/section/vertical/n ... asting.pdf
http://www.caves.org/section/vertical/n ... gPart2.pdf
http://www.caves.org/section/vertical/n ... rtMtoF.pdf

Going back to the original question: Any sit-stand climbing system has some inefficiency. As an example, I once watched a girl climbing in a contest with a sit-stand system. I watched where her head was in relation to her knots. She stood up 18 inches and then sat down 9 inches on each step. She raised her center of gravity, in total, twice the distance of the climb. The distance you lose each time you sit down depends where on your thighs the leg loops are. Climbing harnesses all seem to have the loops low,making them particularly inefficient. I can't say for sure because I have never used a climbing harness. A tight butt strap minimizes the distance lost when you sit down. Most caving harnesses look to be in between.

Having your harness good And tight aswell as the chest harness nice and tight definTly helps reduce any loss when sitting.
Any slop will result in inefficiency.

Caver John wrote:…when clipped through both attachment points and weighted, the waist a.p and the leg loop a.p. are pulled together so there virtually pulling on the samespot on the biner, hence no crossroad. But this is a very valid point and I have concidered switching to deltas

I agree, both the waist and leg loops come together in one point of the attachment.

Ralph E. Powers wrote:I use a Black Diamond Alpine Bod harness with my frog... the triangle mallion is part of the main tie in to the harness and the croll is attached directly to the mallion and thus the "tie-in" is low enough not to be a problem.

I too started with the BD Alpine Bod (no source of caving harness here) but found the triangle mallion being crowded so I attached the croll, cowstail, and rack independently with their own quicklink (be sure to use a carabiner with a Petzl Stop). All attachments capture the waist and leg loops. FWIW, the quicklink lowers the croll a little bit more.

This too was before I got a real caving harness but I go back to it when I let beginners use my rig.