The Little Champ
IT’S THE DESTINY OF LITTLE BROTHERS TO STAND IN THE shadow of their older siblings, no matter how good they are, or how hard they try. And that’s just how it is with the Log Champ LC 550 swing yarder here in New Zealand.
Most contractors only have eyes for the bigger model, the Log Champ 650, with several of these now working in crews around the country.
But there’s just one solitary LC 550 that has been doing its thing in the central North Island for the past year.
That ratio – heavily in favour of the bigger brother – will grow even further with the arrival of two more 650’s in a few months (including a second to Lew Prince Logging), yet I can’t, for the life of me, work out why the smaller machine isn’t selling in greater numbers.
The Log Champ LC 550 is lightning quick, shifts weightier logs than you might give it credit for, can operate from very tight locations, runs on the smell of an oily rag and it is easy to move between sites. And it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars less to buy.
What’s not to like?
It might be the New Zealand penchant for buying bigger equipment than is really necessary. You know, the ‘Big is Good’ theory.
Or it may be that some people have an aversion investing in such a high capital outlay on something brand new, when it’d better to spend two-thirds of the cost on completely rebuilding an old machine.
Whatever the reason, it’s a damn shame we don’t see more new yarders in New Zealand and, in particular, compact models like the Log Champ LC 550.
There’s enormous potential for lightweight yarders in view of the increasing number of smaller and steeper forests coming up for harvest over the next decade. Whilst the excavator-based Harvestline can cover the lower end of that spectrum, there’s also a need for a purpose-built swinger that is designed to work at the higher-production level.
Two contractors who saw that potential are Mike ‘Smiley’ Alexander and Jess Evans, both from Tokoroa.
They are in partnership in one of Smiley’s Fast Harvesting crews that specialises in small, steep blocks, going under the name Fast & Evans. Sounds like the name of a Wild West TV show doesn’t it? But there’s no cowboys in this operation. It’s a thoroughly professional, forwardthinking outfit.
Fast & Evans is one of two yarder crews working in the Fast Harvesting organisation (the other runs a Bellis 85 tower), in addition to five groundbased teams scattered around the central North Island.
Until this time last year, Fast & Evans was operating a Madill 120, one of the first to be built. And then something happened during a visit that Smiley made to Canada.
“I was on a trip with AB Equipment and we went to the T-Mar factory (which builds the Log Champ yarders) and I was pretty impressed with what I saw and got to know the guys,” he says.
“I heard that there was a machine that a deal had fallen over on and it had only done two weeks work. I decided there and then to put my name on it and try and make it all happen, which we did and got it for a good deal. So I was pleased with how it turned out, even though it wasn’t planned.”
Before finalising the purchase, Smiley had to make sure that crew part-owner, Jess, was comfortable with the decision.
“The first I knew of it was when Smiley called and asked me if I was keen for us to purchase a new yarder and I just said OK,” says Jess.
“The old Madill was good, but the maintenance costs were high and you don’t get that with a new machine. I’d never heard of Log Champ
beforehand, so I jumped on the web to have a look and it seemed to be a pretty nice machine.”
Jess is happy with the decision, saying: “Maintenance on this (LC 550) is close to zero and it’s just as fast, if not faster than the Madill and it has all the updates with the electrics in the cab and it’s just a nicer machine to drive all round.”
The LC 550 went to work for Fast & Evans in February last year and has been almost totally reliable during that time, apart from some minor commissioning issues, says Jess. No sign of the problems with the gears suffered by some of the early LC 650 yarders that arrived about the same time. Both models share the same straight-cut gear teeth design. As it turned out, it was actually a problem with the type of grease approved for use on the gears, rather than a manufacturing fault. T-Mar’s Tyson Lambert told NZ Logger: “We’ve gone to grease with a better track record and have updated the design, based on what we learned, to make the gears more durable overall.” All good now then.
The LC 550 was actually the first of the Log Champ yarders to be designed and put into production by T-Mar on its Vancouver Island assembly line, primarily to service demand from crews in British Columbia. The LC 650 followed a little later.
NZ Logger magazine described how T-Mar decided to get into the yarder business after snaring ex-Madill and Cypress engineers, Jim Mantle and Ed Hughes, as part of its development team when we conducted an Iron Test on the Lew/Richard Prince-owned LC 650 in May 2017, so we don’t propose to go over that again.
You can’t, however, go past the similarities in concept between these Log Champ models and the way they work compared to their respective Madill counterparts. Just as an operator of a Madill 124 will immediately feel at home on an LC 650, so will someone who has experience at the controls of a Madill 120 feels comfortable on the joysticks of an LC 550. And, naturally, vice versa.
That’s confirmed by Jess, who has been filling in on the LC 550 while awaiting the arrival of a new operator, and says: “When I got to drive it I was surprised by how similar it was to our old Madill, and how easy it was to drive – it’s like a much more up-to-date version really.”
You’d expect that, of course. It’s been more than two decades since the Madill 120 was conceived and first appeared in the bush, and technology has moved on in that time. But there are some things that haven’t really changed.
The old 120 was designed to operate in tighter and more fragile locations than the larger 124. With an operating weight of 45 tonnes, the 120 could be transported over poorer roads and work from much smaller landings.
That same philosophy has been adopted for the Log Champ LC 550. Although it’s slightly heavier than a 120, tipping the scales at just under 48 tonnes (and not far off 55 tonnes when the grapple, fuel and other items are added) it is some 20 tonnes lighter than an LC 650 and, importantly, it can be transported in one piece, without the boom needing to be removed.
But a couple of decades of new thinking has been applied to many of the working items in the Log Champ and you can see that in the latest technology pumps and electronics that are light years ahead of anything available in the eighties and nineties.
To see how this technology is being used in the 21st century Log Champ LC 550, NZ Logger has joined the Fast & Evans crew just after dawn in what used to be part of the Carter Holt estate on the northern
flanks of the Kaimanawa Forest Park, east of Lake Taupo.
Much of the plantation forest between the park boundary and the Napier-Taupo Highway has already been cleared and turned into dairy farms. The Fast & Evans crew is removing the last pines from what is now Poronui Station, where wealthy visitors use the nearby luxury lodge as a base for fishing, hunting and horse riding in this magnificent outdoor wilderness.
This is an ideal setting for a compact yarder like the LC 550, with short, yet steep spurs stretching out across the valley.
It’s not unlike many forestry blocks found throughout the North Island, which begs the question ‘if a compact yarder like the LC 550 can successfully harvest in these locations, why aren’t other people using it’?
Smiley concedes that “a lot of people like bigger toys and part of the thinking is if you’ve got a small machine you can’t do the bigger jobs, but I dunno, I think you can make most jobs work somehow”.
He goes on to say: “We had some big trees in the last job we did and to see how it handled that was pretty impressive – it was working hard, but it was doing OK.”
That job was in the Whakamaru Forest, north of Taupo, where some of the trees were up to five times bigger than the Radiata Pines being pulled off the hillsides on Poronui Station.
“We had some decent P-size in there and it didn’t seem to bother it much at all – some of it was 5 tonnes,” says Jess.
“Fortunately, it was pulling that sort of stuff downhill. I never got to drive it in there – we had an experienced operator who knew what he was doing, so I let him get on with it. But it was obviously able to handle that much weight.”
Since arriving at Poronui six weeks prior to Christmas, Jess has had plenty of time to get used to the LC 550, after the crew’s regular operator moved on, and he has been able to experience its true versatility.
It took a while, he says: “When I got into the seat I didn’t really have any instructions on how to use it, pretty much had to pick it up myself.
“I knew the basics of a Madill from filling in when the operator was away. I found my way through this one, I wasn’t fast to start with. I haven’t seen a 650 work to be able to compare it, but the 550 is quick and does everything we want.
“It has ¾” ropes, not 7/8” that are on the 650, so you have some limitations on weights, but that was the same with the Madill, which ran ¾” ropes, too.
“Even though you might be able to get a bigger payload with a larger machine I think you can make up for it in cycle speeds. The heaviest load this one has pulled is five or six tonnes. The wood here isn’t big, averaging around 0.75 piece size, I’ve filled that grapple, got six or seven stems in there in one go. It’s all pulp wood, gets trucked up to the Tasman mill at Kawerau.
“This machine has heaps of hydraulic power, you never run out of air with that compressor. With our old yarder you could drain all the air if you were working in close and grabbing lots of wood, whereas with this, it doesn’t matter how much you are doing, you’ve always got full air pressure. It’s another step up from what we had.”
The air is supplied by the same 60CFM rotary vane compressor used in the larger LC 650, which keeps the supply to the hydraulics at peak flow, regardless of the demands on the system.
Jess says the speedier hydraulic system has made a difference to the cycle times, compared to their old yarder, adding: “We are able to pull more wood in a day.
“In here we’ve been doing around 270 tonnes a day, which isn’t bad considering the size of the wood. In Whakamaru on a good day we were doing 14 loads a day – in the high 300 tonnes.”
Jess agrees with Smiley’s assessment that the size of the LC 550 suits the sort of work this particular crew is called upon to do by Oji, who they are contracted to harvest and supply.
“Oji has five ground base crews and we are their only yarder crew, so we have a little bit of a niche in that respect,” he says. “It means they can pick up some hilly country for us, as well as the ground stuff. They don’t go looking for big hauler work with huge faces, a lot of it is small stuff like this, which is quite well suited to this machine.”
One thing that has really impressed Jess is how quiet the Log Champ is, adding: “The old Cummins M11 in the Madill used to scream, eh.”
Opening up the large barn-style doors to the engine compartment, Jesse says he doesn’t really miss the clamshell bonnet that exposed the whole area on the 120, because there is so much space around the Caterpillar C9.3B that powers the LC 550. Not as roomy as the LC 650 engine compartment, though and the doorway through from the steps up to the cab is certainly more of a squeeze.
The C9.3B is a Tier 3 unit, rated at 280kW (350hp), compared to the 350kW (475hp) peak power obtained from the LC 650. However, the smaller engine doesn’t have the same thirst as the LC 650’s C15 and it can go a week before the 860-litre tank needs to be replenished.
The gearbox is smaller, too, being a Cat CX28 powershift transmission, rather than the CX31 model used in the LC 650, but it still runs five forward gears through the lock-up torque converter.
On the left side of the body, two large opening panels provide
excellent access to the large side-by-side drums, as well as the compressor and hydraulics.
As you’d expect, the drums on the baby brother are smaller. There’s 450 metres (1,500ft) of ¾” swaged rope on the main drum, with a maximum line pull of 31,818kg (70,000lbs), using a new generation Wichita 225 watercooled slip clutch. The haulback drum has 946 metres (3,100ft) of ¾” swaged rope and 30,455kg (67,000lbs) of line pull. The strawline drum has 1,370m (4,500ft) of 3/8” rope and 680kg (15,000lbs) of line pull.
All drums are lagged, which provides for easier and smoother wrapping and less danger of tangling the ropes. A nice change from the old 120, whose drums weren’t lagged.
T-Mar has provided a removable ladder so you can get up into this area and when not needed, it is stored on the inside of the right door, along with a spade. Attached to the other door is a manual greasing unit and a fire extinguisher.
And keeping everything cool when the big doors are closed is a large variable speed hydraulic auto-reversing cooling fan. There’s also a hydraulic constant speed cooling pump to help keep the fluid temperatures down.
The LC 550 sits on heavy-duty Caterpillar track frames and components, and runs two-speed motors to move around the pad. Connection to the body is via a heavyduty slew ring and swing drive motor that provides 139,649Nm (103,000ft /lbs) of swing torque.
The yarder is topped by a 10.97-metre (36ft) high walking fairlead gantry that connects to a 15.24-metre (50ft) boom – very similar dimensions to a Madill 120.
Three guy line drums sit within the gantry, which are automatically controlled through a wireless connection. These lines are hooked up to a Komatsu D85 dozer that is dug in behind the yarder as an anchor.
All ropes feed through 20-inch diameter wide sheaves and the fairlead is staggered to reduce line wrap.
It makes a pretty nice package and when we climb up into the rear-entry cab it gets even better. T-Mar has used the same cab as on the LC 650, so there’s plenty of space for a trainer/observer to stand behind the operator’s seat when the door is closed.
It has the same fuss-free layout, with large floor-toceiling windows providing great views in every direction, even with the heavy steel bars out front, where we are currently looking over the deep gully across to where the Sumitomo digger has been set up as a backline on the opposite spur, around 250 metres away.
Anyone who has come off an older hauler will be surprised by the simplicity and lack of levers, switches and buttons. Everything to make the yarder work is on the joysticks and the operator can adjust the modes through the touchscreen in front. The display also has
easy-to-read dials that provide a range of
read-outs, from the temperature of the hydraulic oil to the engine oil pressure.
Iron Tester, Stan Barlow, is familiarising himself with the controls, having only spent a short time in an LC 650 a few months back. He’s operated a few yarders in his time, so it’s just a case of getting used to the nuances of this particular machine.
The excavator-style joysticks are electronically activated through a Parker IQAN electronic control system. The electric-over-hydraulic/air system delivers a very smooth and precise control of the winches and that’s just what you need when fishing for stems down in the gully with a grapple. Gear changing is simple, and these lighter stems mean the operator can make more use of the higher gears to conserve fuel. Stan elaborates more on that in his Iron Test column on page 32.
Like the Prince machine we tested last year, this machine is fitted with a camera just above the grapple, to give the operator a bird’s-eye view as it hovers above the ground. It sits in a heavy-duty housing, which is just as well because it gets a pounding out there on the hillside. Jess swaps over the battery every morning with a new one that he’s charged overnight at home.
The screen provides a distance read-out to assist the operator, along with an audible alert when the grapple gets close to the yarder on its return.
With that sort of assistance, it would be relatively easy to operate the LC 550 without a spotter, but Jess keeps a man out on the opposite ridge to provide a little extra guidance for the yarder operator and to do the regular backline moves. It all helps to keep wood moving off the slopes.
Even in this mechanised age, you can’t always get away from having people on the ground. As well as having a spotter on the hill, the Fast & Evans crew also undertake manual falling, because it’s just not productive to bring in one of the three winch-assist systems in the Fast Harvesting stable to harvest in some blocks.
“We have two manual fallers,” says Jess, adding that one of them is keeping an eye on the spotter today, as he’s under training.
“We do need two fallers to keep ahead of the yarder, this wood is nice and clean and easy to fall but it’s so highly stocked it would be too much for one guy and in these safety-conscious times two guys can do it comfortably so that is what we do.”
There’s plenty of stems on this setting to provide Stan with a good work-out in the LC 550 and as the early morning mist begins to clear, he’s starting to make inroads.
In place of the standard T-Mar grapple that came with the LC 550 is a larger capacity second-hand bunching grapple that was purchased from Shaw’s Wire Ropes in Cambridge especially for this machine. The jaws open wider to allow several stems to be gathered at one time and it seems to be very effective for this job.
At this rate, by the time you read this Iron Test, the Fast & Evans crew will have cleared most of this block and be headed to another job in the central North Island.
The next time they return to Poronui will be to clear the final plantation trees – a block of Douglas-fir, which will certainly pack more weight per stem than Radiata Pine.
“I haven’t had a look at it yet, but I think the Log Champ will handle it OK,” says Jess.
Judging from it performance to date, I’m sure it will. NZL