[Towertalk] climbing harness ??? HELP

[Pete Smith]

At 12:20 PM 10/24/02 -0700, xppq wrote:

>I just got Glen Martin climbing
>harness -  not impressed !!
>The "fall arrest" harness must
>use D ring attached to harness
>in the middle of your back !  they
>say do NOT use other D rings to
>attach to the tower !
>
>I want belt ( or harness) that can attach
>to tower from D rings on each hip .
>Easy to use
>
>The Glen Martin harness has its
>liability NOTICE - if harness is used ONCE in fall arrest do not
>use again -   NOT impressed.

Harnesses are one of those things that people can debate endlessly.  I'm a 
little confused about what harness you got from GM -- did it not have 
D-rings at each hip?  My Klein full-body harness has the middle-of-back 
D-ring for the fall-arrest, and an almost-separate padded belt with D-rings 
on each hip.  Presumably this is because some workers (roofers, maybe?) 
don't need the positioning feature and so buy just the harness.

I'm sure many TT denizens will regard me as over-cautious, but I like 
having both the full harness and the fall-arrest feature, in addition to 
the positioning belt.  I climb with my positioning lanyard attached at one 
hip and the fall-arrest lanyard at the back.  I always have at least one of 
them attached to the tower, even while moving up and down, so that I can't 
fall further than the length of the lanyard; that'll be quite far enough, 
thanks...  I find that the extra effort of attaching and detaching the two 
lanyards is more than compensated for by the added security, and I don't 
find the slow-down it imposes is a problem -- if anything, it keeps me from 
going too fast and getting winded before I get where I'm going.


73, Pete N4ZR
Sometimes a tower is just a tower