[TowerTalk] US Tower HDX-572 Heavy Duty Raising Fixture

[Rick Karlquist]

I have an HDX-5106.  It is like yours with two more sections on
the bottom.  I too had the howling winch problem with the K2550.
I replaced it with an KW3000.  First the good news:  it bolts right
on.  More good news:  there is no brake to overheat or howl, and
no ratchet to click.  Now the bad news.  You have to turn the winch
handle 3 times as many turns.  However, when raising, you don't get
a 3:1 decrease in torque.  This is because of the worm gear friction.
In order to prevent the winch from freewheeling, this friction must
at least equal to the force on the cable.  Thus when cranking up,
you provide over twice the actual force necessary.  When cranking down,
you provide more than enough torque to raise the tower, when you
actually aren't doing any real "work" as my physics teacher used to
say.  When all is said and done, the effort on the crank is, I
would estimate, 2/3 of what it used to be.  I found that I needed
to apply grease VERY liberally just to get the friction down to
something reasonable.  Don't try to operate one of these dry.
My torque wrench reads over 40 foot-lbs going up.  I can use my electric
drill to lower the tower, but I have to use the Armstrong method going up.
 I am investigating really big drills for going up.  Murphy conveniently
just broke my 20 year old "Sears best" corded drill.  My new "Sears best"
cordless just stalls on the way up.  I asked Milwaukee about their right
angle drills and they claim 80 ft-lbs of torque, so one of those might
work.  Only $500 or so :-(

On www.n6rk.com I posted my winch to drill adapter.

For some reason, someone decided that all winch handles will be
10 inches long, as if there was a law requiring it.  I might make
my own winch handle that is 24 inches long and has a grip that
allows me to use both hands.  I think this would improve my efficiency
of hand cranking.

I have learned far more about winchology than I ever wanted to :-(

Rick N6RK




Gene S. wrote:
> I'm using the US Tower Heavy Duty Raising Fixture for a US Tower HDX-572.
>
> The stock winch is the Fulton K2550.
>
> The last time I tilted and restored the tower to vertical the K2550 made
> amazingly loud nosies which I understand may be slippage of the brake.
>
> I recently came across a new Fulton KW3000 winch that is a worm gear winch
> with higher ratings than the stock K2550, and does not use a friction
> brake.
>
> Has anyone upgraded their raising fixture to the KW3000?
>
> Does anyone have an opinion on changing the winch from a friction brake
> archiecture to the worm gear architecture?
>
> 73,
>
> Gene K5GS
>
>
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