An awning strap in good condition will hold your whole body weight before breaking.
Rv awning lock lever broken.
Remove the awning fabric from the awning arms and then remove the tops of the arms to access the torsion assembly.
Ok this all started with a broken window from storms.
The lever will answered by a verified rv mechanic.
The lever is stuck on the up position.
This allows enough slack to lift the arms off the catch.
To replace the cam lock disassemble the awning assembly completely.
For procedure normally i have to flip the lever and unroll the awning a half turn or so.
The fault of the strap breaking has nothing to do with your method.
Sometimes when it is hard to release you need to pull down slightly on the pull strap.
I went to open and use my awning yesterday and found that the direction lever spring has broken.
See the attached manual for the dometic manual.
It is important to allows take every safety precaution available when working with an rv awning.
It might take two persons to do this.
I can still roll up and down ok but the lever does not stay locked in either the up or down positions.
The right side forward most arm for the awning comes down in front of this window and instead of unrolling the awning to access the window i just unlatched the arm from the bottom and swung it out.
It should be an a e dometic model or carefree of colorado.
Dometic awning is in the out position.
Replace the cam locks and reassemble the entire awning.
Both have that lever on the forward end that you reverse in order to move the awning.