CoolIP index                                                          Most recent edit: Monday November 26, 2012

* See legal note below.

Advanced Fall Protection for Living and Working Aloft
 (Fall-Tent Concept)

A trend in fall protection for dare-devil stunts is to use a large volume of stacked cardboard boxes. Falls from 45 to 750m have been performed without parachute or injury. The biggest flaw to these DIY crash pads is the excess size of the box zone needed to make sure the fall ends on target. A lesser flaw is the vulnerability to rain.

An improved method is is to set up one or more box-stacks as "tent-poles", with safety-netting for a "tent-fly" draped over these poles. Thus a far larger area of safety can be secured with much less wasted material. Box stacks would be small enough to easily wrap in plastic to protect from weather.

A kite lifted human payload net can be guyed in place high over the "fall-tent". Properly rigged, there would be no way to fall outside of the protected zone. Falling directly on a box stack should be as safe as falling on the net between boxes. Suitable safety margins could be designed-in and formally validated by professional engineers.


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