If you have a winch which does not have a clutch system, requiring
that you positively crank
the tower down, and which prevents a free-wheeling winch handle, you
are just asking for
this to happen to you:
-0-
Last January I had an unfortunate accident that cost over 5K and the
attention of a hand surgeon here in Phoenix to fix it.....
I was cranking my tower (51') down and, although I thought I could
see it all OK I could not....the top section hung up on something and
the center section continued
to come down as I cranked.....the weight did not change because they
were coming down together....at some point, for some reason, the top
section came "unstuck"
and dropped some 6 or 8 feet....the impact of this tore the winch
handle out of my hand and it whipped around and broke my thumb, and
did a great deal of damage
to the thumb and first finger.....many stitches and pins later the
thumb is about 50% usable.....and that's the best it is going to get !!
So, my rules have changed....If lowering the tower...I INSIST THAT A
SECOND PARTY BE THERE TO WATCH AND ACERTAIN THAT BOTH THE TOP AND
MIDDLE SECTIONS
ARE COMING DOWN PROPERLY !It is difficult to look up the tower and
see if all is well....a second person standing a short distance away
can see things you cannnot....
And I wish I had 100% use of my thumb again not to count the agony of
the removal of two 1.875 steel pins without any deadening....as I
told the doc.....I believe
I broke the nose of the last person that hurt me that bad......Nuff
said.....Be Careful...................................joel, w7epa
W7epa@ARRL.net
-0-
You can buy winches from Grainger for not a lot of money.
A whole lot cheaper than the medical care you're going to need if you
continue to use a free-wheeling winch.
I had a 40' tubular tower, which used one of the offending winches.
The crank-down was so tedious that the blasted thing came out of my
hand,
and smacked me. I was lucky that it was only a bruise, although my
hand was
out of commission for over 3 weeks as a result.
This is every bit as important as having a positive pulldown cable
system in
the tower.
N2EA
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