Rappel Rescue Systems Pro-Pak

Technical Details

I acquired this eight from Alan Shelby in 2004.

The Rappel Rescue Systems Pro-Pak is forged from aluminum alloy and then hard anodized. Mine is 191 mm. tall, 86 mm. wide, and 16 mm thick. The rope hole is 42 mm. high and 60 mm wide. The top center thickness is 12 mm. The shaft length and width are 46 mm. and 23 mm, respectively. The auxiliary hole is 24.3 mm. high and 52 mm. wide. The eye measures 41 mm. by 42 mm. The ears are 30.6 mm long. My Rappel Rescue Systems Pro-Pak weighs 294 g.

The front of the Pro-Pak has "PRO" in raised forged letters, and the rear has "U. S. A.," also in raised forged letters.

Comments

The Rappel Rescue Systems Pro-Pa falls into my miscellaneous figure eights with ears category. I started searching for the Rappel Rescue Systems Pro-Pak after seeing it in the second edition of Tom Martin's book, Rappelling (by the way, Rappelling features several items from my collection). Finally, in March 2004, Adam Noble spotted one that Alan Shelby was selling on eBay. Adam remembered seeing this on my Ten Most Wanted List and let me know about the auction. Many thanks to Adam and Alan.

If you look closely, you will see that my Pro-Pak eight is slightly different than Tom's. I believe mine is the newer model. If you spot an older model, please email me.

The Pro-Pak was designed for use with Kevlar webbing. Unfortunately, I do not have any of the original webbing to use for testing the Pro-Pak, so I have to base my comments on experience and on nylon webbing tests. The main comment is that webbing tends to provide a much faster rappel than rope does, so the normal Figure Eight arrangement will not be adequate for most people to rappel safely. The Bar in the Pro-Pak allows one to add more friction. The small picture shows one higher-friction arrangement.

The other problem with webbing is that it has far less abrasion resistance than rope does. In general, rappelling on webbing should be a one-time, last resort use.

I have one other webbing descender in my collection: the Air Force Lowering Device. Compared to it, the Pro-Pak is huge.

This design was protected by U.S. Patent #4714135.