On Tuesday 28th September the VTIO in partnership with Council Arboriculture Victoria (CAV) will be running a workshop on tree hazard assessment in the beautiful grounds of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne.
Details are still to be finalised, but we hope to be working with several leading speakers to cover a range of topics related to visual tree assesment, identifying structural weak points and discussing targets, as well as offering a guided ‘walk and talk’ around some of the interesting trees in the gardens. Further information will be posted here as soon as it becomes available.
Registration is available using the form given here.
On Tuesday 28th September the VTIO in partnership with Council Arboriculture Victoria (CAV) will be running a workshop on tree hazard assessment in the beautiful grounds of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne.
Details are still to be finalised, but we hope to be working with several leading speakers to cover a range of topics related to visual tree assesment, identifying structural weak points and discussing targets, as well as offering a guided ‘walk and talk’ around some of the interesting trees in the gardens. Further information will be posted here as soon as it becomes available.
Registration is available using the form given here.
The dates for the Victorian Tree Climbing Competition have also been pencilled in – we hope to run the competition across the weekend of October 23rd/24th, with the venue tentatively confirmed as Warragul. Further details and entry forms will be given here as they become available.
Good luck to Kiah Martin and Grant Cody, who are representing Australia in today’s International Tree Climbing Competition. Word from the States is that the preliminaries on Saturday were rained off, forcing the whole competition into a one-day format on the Sunday. Results will be posted here as soon as they are available.
In better news, the first revisions of the popular handouts from the recent workshop are now up online.
The PDF on Single Rope Technique now features the RAD system (pictured to the right).
Introduction to Redirects has been updated to include Tom Oldmeadow’s In-Line Retrievable Redirect (see below.)
Perhaps the biggest revision has been to Working the Angles, which has been updated with a new appendix showing graphs of the various relationships described in the text: much easier to work with on a job site than a complicated equation!
The VTIO would also like to announce that the next workshop in this series will be on Visual Tree Assessment. Date and details are still to be finalised, but keep watching this space!
The first VTIO advanced tree climbing workshop took place on Monday 5th July and was a great success. The day was clear and warm despite some early clouds, and we were lucky enough not to get any rain.
The group completed a range of scenarios set in five different trees, and used some surprising and innovative techniques. We also spent time indoors, looking at force vectors and discussing the VTIO Tree Climbing Guidelines. The VTIO hopes to take these out of the draft stage by the Victorian Tree Climbing Competition (tentatively scheduled for Oct. 23rd in Warragul) and we really need feedback from the climbing community!
The handouts from the workshop (on Force Vectors, Redirects, and Single Rope Technique) are now available in PDF format from the Downloads section of the website. These are intended to be ‘living’ documents, and will be regularly revised as techniques evolve and new equipment gets produced, so do get in touch if you have a better way of doing things or think that an old favourite which we have left out ought to be included.
Please also get your thinking caps on, and check out the Redirect Challenge, in the Redirects download. The VTIO is offering a prize of $300 for the best new redirect plan sent in by the VTCC, in late October. Ged Reynolds is currently leading the field with an innovative variation on the ‘Ropeman Redirect’.
The VTIO would like to thank the City of Boroondara for their invaluable help and support in making this workshop such a success. In addition, Cannings of Mt Waverley were ready as always to give their support for the industry, and provided the sponsorship which let us hold this event. The ATRAES group will soon have several of the SRT systems discussed and demonstrated, as well as a custom-spliced redirect, available for sale through their website. Even if you missed the workshop, you should take the time to check out this exciting new gear!
The VTIO is also looking forward to running another workshop between now and the climbing competition. Details are still to be confirmed, but both ‘Aerial Rescue’ and ‘Visual Tree Assessment’ are strong candidates. Keep checking the website for more details closer to the time.