Small but perfectly formed
I HAVE AN ADMISSION TO MAKE. I WAS not expecting Rob Leslie’s T-WINCH 10.2 to impress me so much. I was blown away by what this small winch-assist could do.
At the start I was like, ‘I don’t know how this thing is going to work’, but it surprised me. I didn’t figure out what all the knobs and switches on the handset did, but enough of the basic ones to make it go. Just to go back and forth and dial it up or down, depending on if you needed more traction or braking power.
With the skidder, I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull a big drag up the track… but on the tether it was just like I was on flat, dry ground.
Rob told me what weight to put in and boom, it worked. I did have to change the weight settings, depending on where I was on the track. So, when I first hooked up that drag, I was sitting on about 8 or 8.5 and I was able to easily drive away and then I could dial it down when I got further up. Went down to 4 tonnes to steer around the corner and down to 1 as I neared the block. Made it really easy to turn.
Going back down the hill I left it on 1 tonne, which helps with braking. Some skidders can over-run when you are backing down a hill but doing this it slows you to a comfortable level. So it works both ways.
I knew that when it came off the tether it was going to struggle, and it did. What a difference.
Swapping to the Sumi felling machine, we had to resort to Rob using the handset and me telling him what weight I needed over the radio. I left it on 8.5 tonnes all the time although it did need 10 tonnes briefly when I was trying to walk up a steeper bit. That helped because I felt it dig in and just walk up. Then back at 8.5 to walk normally, no sign of struggling and it turned easily.
It’s amazing how it works because it’s not connected to the machine you are driving. It’s all on the remote. That puzzled me at the start because I couldn’t get my head around that, after my previous winch-assist experiences. But as soon as you realise it’s all through the rope it becomes clear.
The size of the rope didn’t worry me but I did have a bit of concern about the size of the chain that connects to the Sumi, though this was resolved when I saw the chain was actually stronger than the rope.
I looked at their checklist and it’s pretty thorough. It goes through everything. And that’s the biggest thing these days, keeping up with your maintenance, so if you know your gear is always good to go you don’t mind heading down a slope on the tether.
When you are falling you have to be aware of the ropes and, working around the rope and making sure that you fall the tree away from it. I got close a couple of times, but just being aware is the key thing.
The plus side is that you have a much more stable platform to fall the trees with. It’s the same with the skidder, it allows you to relax a bit more and concentrate on the job. It reduces the rocking and means when you stretch out with the boom it’s not going to move so much. It feels stuck to the hill. Some of those trees I was stretched out to the max. But it works.
It is high tech, yet it’s so simple at the same time.