[TowerTalk] Motorized winch for a crank up tower.

[terry burge]

In the past I bought a worm gear winch that I think was a Ramsey. I bought it from Northern Tool and Supply or something like that in the midwest. I still get their catalogs. It was only about $1200 for the 8000 pound winch and works great. I used it on my combination Rohn 45 and 25 tower to raise and lowing it. Mind you this type of winch is not recommended for overhead lifting but it handles my 50' of Rohn 45 with 50' of Rohn 25 tower 'home brew' combination at about 930 pounds of weight just fine. A little intimidating raising and lowering it with the 15' pipe ginpole arrangement but it has always held whatever load I put on it. You can see a picture of it on my QRZ page. I'll check to make sure that is still true just to be sure. But I could not complain about what I got for the price. 

I now have another tower but plan on putting up my Rohn 45/25 tower as soon as I can. Plan on another BIG Quad Array for it. The tilt up, crank up seemed to work pretty well as long as I didn't try to go over about 78-80'. Outside tower with bolt heads on the inside and inner tower with bolt heads facing in. Bolt heads catching was where I would sometimes need to yank on the upper guy wires to clear a hang. Used a good size hand crank winch to raise the inner section. 

Oh, with this type of winch it cost me about $500 locally to get a custom mount made because it is designed to be like on a wreaker mounted between the truck frame rails. This time I have three sections of Rohn 55 to build the ginpole.

Terry
KI7M


> On May 8, 2018 at 12:25 PM gregg.w6izt1 at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> I am planning on replacing the hand winch with a motorized winch on my
> TX-455. The price for the winch from US Tower exceeds my budget. I have seen
> a couple of implementations where boat lift winches have been utilized as
> tower winches. They seem robust and are easily fitted to the application.
> 
> 
> I have also seen where  a winch with a brake such as the Superwinch WINCH2GO
> 1140222
> https://superwinch.com/collections/superwinch-portable-winches/products/winc
> h2go
> 
> 
> I'm hoping to get some insight from the folks here on the reflector. Any
> help is greatly appreciated.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Gregg W6IZT
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
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