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Hang It All!
Submitted by An Outdoor Idiots Team Member.
Introduction
When the roaming Englishman is living in a tent / mountain bothy / log cabin / under a tarp etc, the first thing he must do once the shelter is secured is to ensure that he can brew tea. We have covered this already.Another desperately important thing that the Englishman must be able to do while staying in his temporary abode is to hang things. The framed portrait of the Queen is of course the first thing to go up...
...but there are often many other things besides.
Food must be hung out of the reach of deadly mice and scampering bears. Boots must be hung out of the reach of slimy spiders and eight-legged slugs. Rucksacks must be suspended above a sodden ground. Billy cans must be suspended above fires. When trying to make a place a home, suspension is, after tea, the order of the day.
Sadly the art of hanging things is a neglected one, and such things are often left to chance. Not at Outdoor Idiots.com. We never turn up at camp with a shortage of cord or a shortage of things to hang. That's not strictly true. Once, we did turn up with plenty of cord but nothing to hang. So we hung the cord, just for the hell of it.
One of the more challenging things to hang is a source of light. Done poorly, those emergency nighttime tea-and-Sunday-papers sessions can be a frustrating and demoralising experience. Done well, and you will practically forget you are away from home while you read the cricketing scores before bed.
Hanging a light source is challenging because to do it well, it needs to be at the right place, at the right height, and pointing in the right direction. It's all a question of vectors.
[Henry speaks: "Not it's not. Vectors have magnitude and direction. You're talking about position and direction. Go back to school. Idiot!"]
[The Editor speaks: "Oh, do be quiet! Nobody cares."]
We now present a worked example of hanging a source of light with a length of cord, using ideas that can be adapted to hang all manner of things. First, introducing the light source...
The AA Mini Maglite
We chose to use Flossy's pink Maglite for demonstration purposes:
[Flossy speaks: "Baa-aaa-aah!"]
We chose it in order to keep the bikers in our forums happy. Please be clear that we are not intending to insult hairy bikers by suggesting that they carry Mini Maglites. We are intending to insult hairy bikers by suggesting that, should they happen to carry Mini Maglites, we feel sure that they would be pink.
What with the various LED modifications available which can increase the light output and improve the battery life, the Mini Maglite, with its "candle mode" makes a good all-round lantern for taking into the great outdoors. The original bulb is also good, and produces a nice candle-like glow. "Candle mode" is achieved my removing the head to expose the bulb, then placing the bottom of the light into the back of the head, so that the whole assembly can be stood on end like a candle...
... which is nice, if you have a flat surface to rest it on. But often a flat surface is not available, and in any case a light source suspended above the heads of onlookers is a more pleasing arrangement.
It is fairly easy to hang a Mini Maglite, because it has a hole at the back end in order to attach things. However, when suspended from that hole, it is not possible to make the torch point in any direction you want.
So the first thing to do to make our Mini Maglite into a versatile lantern is to attach some cord to it in such a way that it can be used either standing up in candle mode, or hung up, with the minimum of fuss. Which is nice, because it means we get to play with knots...
Page 1 of 4 Next [Top of Page]
Page 1: Introduction, and the AA Mini Maglite.
Page 2: Attaching Cord to a Torch
Page 3: Tying a Half-Baked Prusik
Page 4: Hanging Gymnastics
Page 2: Attaching Cord to a Torch
Page 3: Tying a Half-Baked Prusik
Page 4: Hanging Gymnastics
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