Winching Course - Looking for Interested Parties

On or around Wed, 12 May 2004 22:28:18 +0100, "Paul S. Brown" enlightened us thusly:

If I had a winch and a spare couple of hundred I'd be very tempted.

quite rightly so. you can get several tons of load in a winch cable, and if it breaks loose, it can kill people.

I imagine the thoughts on plasma rope vs. cable is that it's more liklely that the plasma rope can deteriorate in a non-obvious manner. I don't KNOW that, but that's my guess. Steel cable can of course deteriorate too, but the defects are usually obvious (fraying, rusting etc) and you then know that it's dodgy.

Mind, I've seen people doing a recovery with 2 KERRs tied together... and they got away with it, too...

I think if it's a 'real world' recovery situation then most folk would do what they can with what they've got. On a course it's a different thing and I'd hate to turn up at a course and _not_ have winching equipment checked for suitability, safety etc.

Says me, who used a couple of railway sleepers and a climbing rope to help recover my mates Disco last time he got stuck .. though it did still have engine running and wheels turning, just nothing solid for the wheels to bite into .. ;)

Whereas our winch expert has opinions on steel cable; just goes to show that experts rarely agree :)

This sounds interesting though I won't be able to cough up that sort of money for a jolly... not that it's not worth it.

Would be nice to get an accredited qualification at the end such as a basic NVQ wouldn't seem such a lot then I suppose.

Certainly something different to put on the CV and I dare say some chaps & chapettes here could write it off as a business course :-) ..sadly I can't :-(

Lee D

Right, the "opinion" might be on using plasma ropes with braked electric winches, plasma has a low melting point any these winches can generate a lot of heat

Believe it or not, I could actually get 110% funding for this, plus salary costs for the person I sent. It is not inconceivable that I might one day have a customer at the end of a muddy track...

So, can I sign you up Tim?

P.

Needing one or two more to make this happen.

Paul,

Did you get my e-mail ...? I was up for this, just couldn't do the first date.

cheers

simon

Winching isn't really my thing to be honest. I don't have one, and I have only once wished I did.

The grant justification might be a bit thin, since neither our Passat or A3 have winches fitted!

Good luck with it though.

I met a chap at Gaydon who'd probably put a winch bumper together for you.

So - fit a 10k lb winch to the A3 and park it up lamp posts?

P.

The gods must be crazy stylee :o)

Tim... I could be sub contracted to go in your absence on a day off if it helps the book keeping... LOL ;-)

:-)

Lee D