[TowerTalk] wt51 electric winch with pulldown

[jim Jarvis]

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 at 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