[TowerTalk] Anyone Using a Fulton KW3000 Winch with Powerful 1/2 inch Pistol Drill for tower tilting ?

[Al Williams]

The short answer is that I had a U-shaped bracket made that would snug fit 
over the outside leg of the tower and tightly hold it in place by squeezing 
the bracket with two bolts. The bracket was made of 1/4 inch steel that fit 
along about 4 inches of the towers leg.  The bracket stood out long enough 
to fit two pulleys.  I also installed a second pulley at the top of the 
raising fixture along the outside of the fixtures pulley holding structure 
and with a plate to prevent  the cable from jumping off the added pulley.

The longer answer is that this method may not work in other towers.  My 
tower was fabricated by the interim company in California that discontinued 
its tower making and eventually wound up in Karl Tashjian's hands.  I don't 
know if todays design is similar to what mine is but there is enough 
clearance (or is it slop?) that the tower section moving inside the towers 
outer section can slide over the 1/4 inch bracket that is wrapped around the 
outer leg,

I think that the US Tower HDX572 which has the pulley bracket welded to the 
outside part of the tower leg and holds two pulleys is a better design but I 
didn't want to have a welder
come to my tower and possibly weaken it.

The LM470 was designed to be tilted up with its temporary sling mounted 
pulley only once and then the tilt fixture cabling apparatus is removed and 
reinstalled using the top of tilt fixture as a pivot point.  I suppose that 
many users have done this and are satisfied but I wasn't comfortable with 
having the reinstall correct for the first tilting down.  I also observed 
that there was no pulley mechanical advantage in the reinstall and suspected 
that the winch would be overloaded with the Monstir antenna out at the end 
of the mast.

k7puc



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan NV8A" <nv8a at att.net>
To: "towertalk reflector" <towertalk at contesting.com>
Cc: "Al Williams" <alwilliams at olywa.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 10:53 AM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Anyone Using a Fulton KW3000 Winch with Powerful 
1/2 inch Pistol Drill for tower tilting ?


> How did you go about doubling the number of pulleys?
>
> 73
>
> Alan NV8A
>
>
> Al Williams wrote:
>
>> I have a question on overheating winch brakes.
>>
>> I replaced the K1550 on my LM470 tiltover fixture with the K2550 and that 
>> eliminated the very loud squealing when tilting the tower down.  I also 
>> added two more pulleys to the arrangement for a total of four as does the 
>> US tower HDX572.  It takes a lot more cranking with four pulleys but it 
>> is also much easier.  I assume that the load on the winch
>> is less--but is it?  I use a drill to turn the winch when tilting.
>>
>> I have been intermittently stopping when lowering the tower to let the 
>> brake cool off but I wonder if that is necessary.  Is the load on the 
>> brake winch less now that I have four pulleys instead of two in the 
>> cabling system so that it won't heat up as much?
>