The Eleven Slackline Spaceline!
No Preparation needed
A new batch of lines between 15-30m arrived at the slackattack villa for beginner workshops – they had to be deflowered – ideally at the same time! The idea of a multi legged walkable spaceline is an old one – I have had it many times, but we never put in the effort of planning such a project… So we decided to just wing it.
The Space Anchor
Preparing and packing took the usual 30-45min, but the discussion on how to connect the lines in the center was a longer one, it started the evening before. We already did some tests with soft center spaceline connectors (see picture with softshackle as space anchor) last year and it worked nicely. This time we could not built a entirely metal free center anchor, but we kept it to a minimum. Such central anchors are simply much nicer to walk and because it is a waterline, I’m also not worried to much about fabric on fabric friction. Adding a fun sitbag in the middle turned the spaceline into a little playground.
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The Space Main Frame
A stable spaceline frame is best built with more static and strong e.g. 4t polyester (PES) lines in order to minimize the sag of the entire construct. We are limited with sag, and you don’t want such a construct to get close to the river at any time! This PES frame holds most of the tension in the spaceline and in our case, these legs where barely walkable – but there are enough lines to play on! All further lines in between the mainframe are either polyester webbings at low tension/rodeolines or polyamid (nylon) webbings at medium tension. As always with spacelines, polyamid is easier to walk, since the movements and shockloading in case of falls/catches are absorbed somewhat, their dynamic nature therefore allow for a higher margin of error while standing/walking/playing.
Getting the Tension Right
This was quite a challenge, tensioning one line meant that all the others were affected too. Once the main frame is up, it makes more sense to simply leave most lines as Rodeolines – which is lots of fun actually. The PES main frame and the polyamid lines were «tensioned» with Hangover and Linegrip, all the lines in between just got a a hand job through the banana. We managed to stand on the spacelines with eight people at the same time, what a fun experience – check out the video by our talented filmmaker Olivier Schertenleib!
Spaceline with eleven Slacklines over the Aare River in Bern from SLACKATTACK – Slackline Crew.
Video also available on Vimeo.
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Written by Thomas, pictures by Pascal Jetzer, thanks!