How's everyone doing with the SNOW

Gcorron · Apr 5, 2015

Hey, they got it OUT of that marine clay, a feat in itself! Embarrassing to get something THAT big stuck though! Imagine having to tell them you completely lost it.

George

jix · Apr 5, 2015

I am dreaming of a white easter today..another # @#@#$% snow storm again! TD 25 Had big problems with head gaskets tho, George. Probably the engine was just too powerful for the head to stand it. Ours was used to make big firebreaks in the camp training area. ONE PASS=twenty foot firebreak, roots trunks and all..if you stayed out of the loon poop in the swamp. What a snot shooting heavy machine!

vtsnowedin · Apr 5, 2015

Gcorron said:
Hey, they got it OUT of that marine clay, a feat in itself! Embarrassing to get something THAT big stuck though! Imagine having to tell them you completely lost it.

George

I was worried for the guy standing in the way of a cable snap!!
My middle daughter once twitched an Army D9 out of a similar hole in Kuwait using a Army John Deere excavator. They snapped a couple of half inch chains doing it.

mike69440 · Apr 5, 2015

Least the Dogs Love it

vtsnowedin · Apr 5, 2015

mike69440 said:
Least the Dogs Love it

Funny how they like to roll and push themselves across it. What does your pack do besides eat a lot of kibble and leave the results outside?

jix · Apr 6, 2015

If you snap a cable there is a big whiplash... What happens if you snap a chain?

Gcorron · Apr 6, 2015

Every lineman and electrician knows to throw a coat, blanket, or some such over a rope, chain, or cable when you stress it like that. A chain break collapses much quicker, but it is a lot safer to give it a point to collapse on which is the reason for the energy breakpoint, or coat.

The newer nylon type rope is a lot safer (and stronger) than the old hemp ropes we used to be stuck with, but I still don't trust them. Fatalities did happen in the olden days, and I do know one guy missing a hand because of a rope break. Doesn't happen much with the newer materials. Steel cables are particularly unforgiving, but you generally get warning you've stressed them too much, and will most often pull apart at the fittings first, hence the old saying "Never saddle a dead horse" when you make them up.

George

jix · Apr 6, 2015

Gcorron said:
Every lineman and electrician knows to throw a coat, blanket, or some such over a rope, chain, or cable when you stress it like that. A chain break collapses much quicker, but it is a lot safer to give it a point to collapse on which is the reason for the energy breakpoint, or coat.

The newer nylon type rope is a lot safer (and stronger) than the old hemp ropes we used to be stuck with, but I still don't trust them. Fatalities did happen in the olden days, and I do know one guy missing a hand because of a rope break. Doesn't happen much with the newer materials. Steel cables are particularly unforgiving, but you generally get warning you've stressed them too much, and will most often pull apart at the fittings first, hence the old saying "Never saddle a dead horse" when you make them up.

George

Back when I was an officer cadet, we were learning to make a rope bridge across a river. We had some 200 foot lengths of twisted nylon rope and some snap links with which we fashioned a highly tensioned nylon rope cable across a river between two trees. on the one side the cable was knotted around a tree tunk, and on the near end we made a loop aqround a tree trunk with a snap link in the loop. the free end of the cable was passed through the sanp link and then twenty of us hauled tighter and tighter until the center of the cable could not stretch any further. Then we hand-over handed our way across, and back again.
Afterw2ards the SGT MAJOR TOLD ME TO UNTIE the cable. I took a careful look to see how I could release the huge tension of the cable safetly. THe nylon rope had unlahed for about ten feet and the frayed end was soaking wet. While I was studying it, the Sergeant major sais OK I will show you.
W@hereupon he marched up and simply slipped the tie back end free. The rope whipped back, turned around the tree trunk a slashed him very hard across the back of his thighs. He never grimaced, but I did see the tears start out of his eyes. Gads, that must have hurt!.. But that Sgt-Maj never showed it. Sgt Majors are tough SOBS..but they don't aways know how to untie a stressed rope safely. My plan would have been to take several turns around the tree trunk and pay out the tension slowly using friction to control it. I was never tough enough to be a Sgt Maj... nor stupid enough to want to.

vtsnowedin · Apr 6, 2015

jix said:
If you snap a cable there is a big whiplash... What happens if you snap a chain?

Well if you give it a good snap and the end near the stuck truck breaks it will catch up with the snapping truck, whack the tailgate, go over the top and smash the rear window. BTDT.

jix · Apr 7, 2015

OK...so its almost as bad as a snapped cable..... almost, but not quite.

Worst I saw was a guy trying to pull a loaded pick-up out of a ditch using a nylon load strap with the end hooked to a trailer hitch on the towing vehicle. The hitch was welded and the weld broke. The broken hitch ball snapped back hard and went right through the windshield of the stuck truck and then out the back window and hit the box cover doors, which it penetrated like a cannon ball. Sheesh!