Customer Reviews

Engineering Practical Rope Rescue Systems

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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This text is what the serious student of technical rescue has been looking for. It gives detailed technical information to help the serious rescue technician, instructor, or team member understand the "why" and not just a simple "how" to design and set up very technical systems. Mike uses his background, experience and most of all his sense of humor to bring some very old questions into focus.

First, this book is full of information. Read it twice and then keep it handy for reference... Micheal Brown clearly knows and cares a lot about rope rescue. My congratulations and thanks to him for distilling what he knows into this work.

However, I hope there's a revision in the works to correct some of the issues in the illustrations. After looking closely at the text and the illustrations, I have to advise relying only on the information in the text and not expecting the good info there to be repeated in pictorial form...

(For example, the lock-off described in figure 4-41(A) doesn't even start with the eight plate rigged correctly. And I think figure 9-21(B) is the diagram for a magic trick...there are more than 2 ends for some of those ropes...)

This book has a lot of good pictures to help illustrate various points and safety practices. There is a great deal of information located in this book and would make a great addition to any resource library.
There are a couple of places where I feel the author leads one to believe that the method described in this book is the ONLY way to do something, or that a particular piece of equipment is the ONLY one that can be used in a given situation. I personally don't tend to follow those kinds of thinking, and suggest looking in several different resources before you make any hard and fast rules for yourself; and of course ALWAYS get good qualified instruction on anything you are not sure about. This book will definitely help you to become more comfortable with any practices and procedures you may be unclear on, as well as reinforce others you may be completely comfortable with.
I'm glad I own it, and I refer to it often.