I have a UST 89' tower with a raising fixture. We made an adaptor to the winch
handle from a piece of pipe with a shaft welded in such a way that it will fit
the chuck of a 1/2" DeWalt drill motor and will replace the hand crank. The
drill motor turns too fast for the tilt over process, the brake gets too hot
for my liking. Since I don't tilt the tower over very often, and since the
tilting over process is the less physically taxing, it has not been a problem.
However when raising the tower to the standing position the drill works very
well. The drill motor was way less that $200. I think it was in the $150 range
at the Depot.
Julio,W4HY
> Sorry, no picture.
> I should take one some day.
>
> But I have one of the old Wilson 55' rotatable towers.
> The winch is mounted to a 8" piece of channel steel.
> Just in case your not familiar with steel nomenclature,
> a 'channel' looks like a [
> The channel is secured to the bottom section with 2 large U bolts just about
> the base fixture.
> The winch is bolted to the channel.
>
> The winch was originally hand operated but the gearing is such that it took
> little strength but much endurance to raise and lower.
> The shaft that accepted the cranking handle was too large for the 1/2" chuck
> but a local machine shop made me an adapter that fit on the shaft and was
> turned down to a diameter that the Milwaukee drill would accept.
> The adapter still allowed the use of the hand crank in case of power outage.
>
> Presently, the drill just hangs from the shaft/chuck, one hand on the switch
> and one on the side handle is easily sufficient to hold the drill.
> But I intend to weld up a bracket so one hand will be sufficient.
> As the winch has that gearing type that it will not freewheel, releasing the
> switch allows the winch to hold fast.
>
> The Milwaukee Hole Hawg drill is $350 approx. at Home Depot, the winch I got
> for free. So economically it's cheap.
> Plus you have this powerful right angle drill for drilling those holes to
> run coax through. :-))
>
> The only caveat is that my Wilson self supporting, rotatable does NOT have
> positive pulldown.
> So care and patience is called for when retracting during windy conditions.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "William F. Beyer Jr." <n2wb@arrl.net>
> To: "FireBrick" <w9ol@billnjudy.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 6:39 AM
> Subject: Re: [Towertalk] Hand winches??
>
>
> >
> >
> > FireBrick wrote:
> >
> > > http://www.thern.com/
> > >
> > > I have one that I adapted a Milwaukee Hole Hawg drill to.
> > >
> >
> > Hello.
> > Great site.
> > Do you have photo of winch on your tower, a big tnx.
> > What kind of tower do you have?
> >
> > WB
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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