First thing is you should treat all recovery situations as dangerous and make sure everyone is well back from the situation. The length of cable or strap in use is the distance from the car you need to be. So if 30 meters of cable is out you need to be at least 30 meters to the side of the stuck vehicle on a right angle to the recovery procedure.
The type of equipment you use will vary how you carry out your recovery.
Synthetic winch rope has less recoil than wire rope and is much easier to handle.
Winch extension straps and tree trunk protectors dont store kinetic energy like snatch straps do and so therefore also dont have as much recoil as snatch straps.
But if any of the above break they will recoil to a certain extent and you dont want to be in their path if they do spring back.
Someone may wish to add to this
Someone may wish to add to this
If you are wishing to join your winch cable to the winch extension strap then I use the hook on the end of the cable to join onto the loop in the strap BUT ALWAYS drape a heavy blanket or similiar over the cable near the hook.
It gets more difficult if you need to join two extension straps (or two snatch straps) and for this situation I always carry a piece of turned hardwood timber of about 6 - 7 cm diameter and about 30 cm long. The weight of the wood being sufficient so that it won't be flung far by the strap and strong enough so that it wont be compressed and ripped in half. I then feed the loop of one strap through the loop of the other. Place the log in the loop of the first strap then pull the two straps in opposite directions to place a preliminary load on the log and hold it in place. For winching you can then start to apply load. Recheck all is in order when the cable first becomes suspended (not a high load) and then continue if in order.
For each strap in use you add another cable dampner to the process.
Because of the nature of a snatch you do not have the preliminary check in the middle of the process. IMO you should still drape something over the snatch straps to reduce recoil.
I have also seen people use a mag or newspaper rolled up in place of the log for snatch situations... but I'm not convinced it would be strong enough so withstand the higher loads of some recovery situations.
Having seen many ropes and straps break it appears to me most breakages occur near the end of the cable or strap unless it has rubbed in the middle on something sharp like a rock edge. Wire cables will break where there is a kink or split strands.
