OK, I'm back home now. I gave the device a few short runs this afternoon in between chunking my burn pile, too short to really get very deep into it, but my first impressions are very favorable. I tried it on both Poison Ivy (11.7mm) and Blue Streak (a fat 13mm). Both responded well, once dialed in.
The ease of tuning is really great, but I would benefit from some guidelines for where to start first and how to go forward from there. With adjustments available on both the upper and lower halves of the unit, there are a huge number of potential combinations. A bit daunting to guess how to best achieve proper tuning. Maybe you covered this in previous posts Jaime, but if so I missed it. If you did, just point me to them.
Anyway, I had a little trouble getting things tuned so the device didn't drop back down the line under a bit of unweighted slack with the PI, but did get it properly adjusted soon enough. In the end after much fooling around with both upper and lower at the same time, I just started with both set at maximum gap, then went to the lower adjustment, ran all the way through that range, then started with the upper adjustment. With the much fatter BS, not much adjustment was needed, only a couple of pin points tighter than fully open on the lower worked for me today.
It advances sweetly clipped to my chest harness, and slack tending by hand is nice as well. No complaints so far on either of these functions. Bob is right, the mid-point clevis attachment is just right.
OK, it's a beauty, no doubt about it, artistic. To gild the lily, I'd suggest finishing the side plates like Ushba did with their titanium ascenders years ago
. I'll see if I can find a pic online...if not, I'll take one of my Basic and post it.
Will be climbing on it again tomorrow if the weather holds...but I won't keep it much longer, as I've already kept it from circulation too long. DMc is next for this one?
. Kind of a crappy pic off the web. If anyone really cares, I can dig mine out and get something better.
