In reply to jimtitt:
> Err no, the impact force is only meaured on the first drop. The number of drops given are to failure
I am now totally confused. Are you saying we should retire ropes once we reach the quoted number of falls? If so, that would give many a sport rope a life expectancy of a week and a half, given the number of falls some people take working a route, let alone when practice falls are taken into account, Surely that cannot be correct so I presume I must be misunderstanding what you are saying? To a non-technical bloke like me it seems that the length, severity, fall factor, soft catch/hard catch etc must all come into the equation. My ropes take dozens of falls over their lifetime.