[TowerTalk] Safety harness/belts

Jim Lux jimlux at earthlink.net
Sun Nov 18 17:26:38 EST 2012


On 11/18/12 1:32 PM, John E. Cleeve wrote:
> Gentlemen,
>
> If you are interested, there is a film, available on the Crystal Palace
> web site, which shows how the 800ft London BBC Television tower at Crystal
> Palace, SE London, was designed, and then built and erected, using muscle
> and ropes, no safety lines are visible, well worth watching.
>
> I would like to see how a tower, like the one in the video is erected,
> from the ground up, my question being, to what did the riggers attach
> their safety harness? Does anyone know of an accessible video/film?
>



wouldn't it be like being leader on a rock climb.  You have protection 
slightly below you, so your maximum distance of fall is 2x height above 
protection.  You depend on the springyness of the belay rope, and the 
worst case is a fall factor of 2:  the fall distance is 2x the total 
rope length.

the fear when climbing rocks is the "zipper" out problem.. you fall, the 
first pro catches, then pops, then the next, then the next, until you 
either hit the end of the rope or the ground (or hopefully, bushes and 
trees at the bottom of the pitch)

Your boldness when leading largely determines how often you put 
protection in.  And when there's a dicey move, you ask your belayer to 
take out the slack.



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