[TowerTalk] winch

[W0UN -- John Brosnahan]

>
> >
> > Where does one find a suitable electric winch to aid in reeling 200 or 300
> > feet of metal cable to be used in traming a large beam onto a 150 to 200
> > foot tower?

I have never used a winch to pull 6L 20M and 8L 15M Yagis
to the tops of 199 ft towers.  I use my tractor/front loader or my
old F-250 4x4 as the remote anchor point and I use 3/16" 1x7
or 1/4" 1x7 guy strand for the tram.  I pull up as much slack as I
can by hand then hook it onto a good (2 ton) come-along to get
the final tension.  The antenna is then slung under the tram with
suitable pulleys and the antenna is pulled up using a 3/8"
dacron (woven braid, not layed) rope.   I pull up the antenna
with my John Deere Gator.  Strong enough for my biggest
Yagis without being so strong that it will break anything if
something goes wrong.  For more typical antennas (3L or 4L
Yagis) I am sure that a heavy duty riding lawn mower would be
adequate.  In fact I have used my 16 HP mower on occasion
for TH-7 tribanders, etc.  The force required is obviously a function
of the antenna weight as well as the slope of the tram line.

I would never pull an antenna up with a truck--if something hangs
up there is too much power available and something can break
before the problem is noted.

The Gator is has been great for bigger 20/15 Yagis as well as
4L 40s with linear loading.   I might be a bit nervous about using
it with a full-size 80M 3L and I would want to analyze the forces
in more detail.

--John 
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