[TowerTalk] Quickly releasable knot

[Pete Smith]

This past weekend I was on a ground crew putting up two large 40m 
yagis.  Because the tag lines needed to be reachable from the tower, they 
were attached only maybe 18 inches from the center of the boom, which made 
it very hard to apply enough force on the tag lines to control the antenna 
(lever arm too short).

I seem to recall reading, at one time, about a special type of knot 
designed for remote untying.  In a nutshell, it holds tight as long as the 
"untying" force is applied through the loop formed by the knot, but a good 
tug on a "pigtail" sticking out of the knot itself will cause the knot to 
untie.  It occurred to me that such a knot could have been used to attach 
the tag lines some distance from the center of the boom, with the pigtail 
taped to the boom and long enough to reach to the center, so that the tag 
lines could be released when no longer needed.

Am I making this up, or does someone know the details or, perhaps, a web 
site source?

73, Pete N4ZR
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