BREAKING OUT
Peter Stephens and his crew seem to be saddled with small blocks and plenty of moves, despite working for a corporate forest owner. But that’s just the way they like it. This ground base operation does an excellent job in these compact compartments around Kinleith.
THEY SAY GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALL packages and that’s certainly the case with the Fast & Evans Log Champ LC 550 swing yarder.
If I had to sum it up in a single word it would be: Wicked.
Plenty of power on tap when you need it, easy to operate and very quick with the grapple – even when it has a weighty load on board.
I’ve had a brief drive of a 650 and everything felt the same, just in a smaller version. Much like the difference between a Madill 120 and 124. I quite like the size of this machine, compared to the 650. For where it is working and just looking at future blocks it will go into, it’s the right choice for what this crew is harvesting.
It can get into small areas that a larger yarder might not be able to. Where this one is now, in a bit of a gut and pulling over 200 or 250 metres, it’s just perfect country for it.
There is a similar feel to a Madill 120 on the controls, with only a bit of difference with the open and close grapple function. On the right joystick you have an all-functions control to lift all ropes that will drive all the drums to pick the grapple up so you would mainly use that in the chute or in the cutover. It would be good to have an all-down function, where you can hit a button and it drops the grapple rather than having to rely on the foot brakes. With more time you would get used to it and find a way to make it work for you.
Then you push forward for outhaul and pull it in for inhaul, which interlocks the drums. You don’t need much pressure on the lever at all. On a 120 you are riding it harder but this one is really light and quite touchy, and it takes a bit of getting used to.
On the left joystick you’ve got your throttle, pulling it back and left/right for your slew and there is also the horn on this side.
For anyone coming off other yarders, they’ll have to get used to two foot pedals, not three. The one on the left is for haulback on the tailrope, and on the right, instead of two pedals, it is just one to operate the main drum and the slackpuller drum. This takes a little bit of getting used to because with a Madill 120 you can roll your foot to put more pressure on one and you can open your grapple with your foot. With this one you can’t do that – you open it on your joystick. Hey, it’s still good, it just takes a little getting used to a difference system.
Lots of power in the hydraulics. There was a couple of times when I was searching round and trying to double up logs and with previous yarders I’ve experienced you’d run out of air, but this system never struggled for air.
The power for the inhaul and outhaul is brilliant, and the slew power is something else – it’s just unreal how much slew power you’ve got as you increase the revs, it’s just effortless. I got a couple of big drags and it pulled them up easy and I wasn’t coming up full revs. Everything I wanted to do, it did very well. You don’t really need to use the lower gears much, unless there’s a lot of weight in the grapple.
Good that the drums are lagged and you don’t have to worry about how the ropes set onto them.
Although it wasn’t the original grapple, I did like this one. You get some grapples that pinch the log rather than gather in together, and this one gathers them in nicely.
The cab is a really good place to spend a day. Lots of vision out front and down to the landing on either side, good space for someone else to stand behind the seat and lots of storage places. The AC is brilliant and I’m with Jess on the quietness of the cab, I only had the music softly playing.
It’s a champion yarder alright.
NZL