so currently I’m running a separate tether with a ropeman. When I’m ready to come down, I hook up my rappel rope with a figure 8 and a swabisch hitch hooked to my lineman’s loop like a backup. Then I take my LB throw it around as a back up to take the weight off my tether and put it into my rappel line. My LB uses a swabisch with a tender. Then when I’m set in rappel I undo the LB and down I come taking sticks off as I come down.
The only time I use mechanical stuff is in my tether for ease of operation. I’ve had trouble bel tending my hitches on a tether after sitting for a while which is why I went back to ropeman.
I then came across the PBH video where he used a swabisch, an ATC under it to add friction and act as a tender, and then a hollow block on his Lineman’s loop where his brake hand would be. And he one sticks with it and he’s similar to my size and seemed to have no problem tending his hitch with it.
I typically only hunt 18 feet max, so I was hoping to have a non mechanical setup ready to go if I need to bail out for whatever reason.
in the past I’ve tried hunting off my rappel line on a ROS and then adding a figure 8 to rappel, I didn’t like it as it felt very unsafe on steps doing that at height. I have a platform now and if I use my LB it feels safer but I’m going to tackle one sticking and if $hit hits the fan, I’d like a non mechanical Option if possible to be safe and just bail out. Obviously this is getting into the weeds as to my reason why, but I know a major factor and rope/hitch use is the correct combination between felxibility rigidity and many other factors. So I was looking for options that people thought worked really well.
I hope that answered any questions so we can back on track. If this does I may delete responses and add these to my original post in order to keep this list on track to end up as a quick reference guide for best combinations in the future.