Helicopter Crane [Archive] - Heavy Equipment Forums

WColtharp

10-30-2008, 03:52 PM

I caught this down the road from my old apartment at new Lowes store. They had a whole lot of what looked like AC units they were lifting on top of the store. It surprised me that they were going this route instead of a small crane. Is this a common practice?

Turbo21835

10-30-2008, 04:29 PM

A small crane would probably not have the reach needed to place them. It would take a rather large crane, and depending on how many units needed to set, it would take a lot longer with a crane. These helicopter guys are fast. Plus they dont have to worry about radius, they go where ever they need to go

cat 385

10-30-2008, 06:27 PM

the walmart distribution center i worked on out side of reno nevada did this, the wind was so bad that they were delayed a few days,i was hoping to watch but i was done on that job and i never got to see them set them.i have watched them set the ski lift towers,that's fun to watch.

95zIV

10-30-2008, 06:34 PM

We had a job at a ski area where they where using a helicopter and 2 concrete buckets to reach the top of the mountain where the job actually was.

Steve Frazier

10-30-2008, 06:57 PM

I once watched a steel building get framed in New Milford, Conn. by a helicopter. It was the same type as pictured here. It was some interesting to watch them set the beams in place with the helicopter.

N.CarolinaDozer

10-30-2008, 07:40 PM

I think I have seen that helicopter set AC units on two different Wal-Mart's we have graded for. I think they are from Georgia. We had to halt work for an hour while they set them. Pretty cool to watch them work!

landrvrnut22

10-30-2008, 09:55 PM

I have built 3 Wal-marts as a GC. There is only 2 ways to set the units. Crane them up with a 40-50ton truck crane, and use a rolling gantry to set them in place. Or, as the pictures show a helicoptor. I did 2 buildings using the crane and gantry method, the third by helicopter. Honestly, I liked the helicopter, best, but I was very leary of safety. The crane and gantry is much slower, but 100x safer.

In order to pick and set, you need a 300ton crane, which is ussually not in the budget.

OCR

10-31-2008, 12:45 AM

Hawk!!!... get away from that thing... just get away!!!

26084
26085
26086

The S-64 had a six-blade main rotor and was powered by two 4,050 shp JFTD-12A turboshaft engines.

OCR

OCR

10-31-2008, 01:42 AM

Now Hawk!!!.......

26087

RonG

10-31-2008, 05:20 AM

That 'copter doing the lift appears to be an old H34.I used to fly in one as a passenger back in the early '60s during my military TOD.
If it has the original engine it is a Wright WhirlWind radial and they were LOUD!!
If you happened to be under them as in infantry while they were taking off it was painful to your ears,almost more than you could stand.It is nice to see one still earning its keep.Ron G

OCR

10-31-2008, 06:07 AM

Hi RonG,

I think it's an S-58T... but I'm not sure... this came from Wikipedia.
26088

OCR

RonG

10-31-2008, 03:04 PM

I can see from this pic that it probably has a turbine engine now as the radial exhaust exited at the bottom under the nose.I will bet it has some lineage back to the old Sikorski though.Ron G

OneWelder

10-31-2008, 06:48 PM

Local Wal-Mart set them with a Helicopter about 10 yrs ago

Freightrain

11-05-2008, 03:40 PM

Anyone remember the show Riptide? It was two detectives, and they flew a Pink one? called Mimi?

OneWelder

11-05-2008, 04:37 PM

Yea a big tall snub nose- looked like a Korean War left over
Do remember " whirlyBirds" ? Two guys that could best be discribed as Calif. bush pilots, detective, good guy heros.
They had one of those small bubble front - like on Mash

ForestDan

11-05-2008, 04:42 PM

A competitor of mine used a helicopter to extract logs from a hillside... and almost lost his shirt. Nice guy, but he seems to shoot himself in the foot every now-and-then. I believe it cost him around $3,000 per hour to operate, and he figured it would take about a day to clear the mountain slope he cleared. It took 2 1/2 days... Doooh! He should have consulted more people. My bid was lower, but to save the client money, I recommended that we lop and scatter the slash. For a few bucks more, the client had it all removed. Great for the client, not so great to the contractor. Be careful what you wish for, folks!

RonG

11-06-2008, 04:40 AM

I have some pics of the H34 in an article I wrote for a military site dedicated to military history.I will link you to it.Scroll down the page until you see the heading "58th Engineers",it is just over 3/4s of the way down and you will see a series of pics and text.Double click the pics and each on opens up to a couple of larger ones.Ron G
http://usarmygermany.com/Units/ArmoredCav/USAREUR_14thACR.htm

OCR

11-13-2008, 12:50 AM

Thanks Ron,

Good article, and good pictures of the H34.

I happened to see on at a small town air show, back when I was going to A&P
school at Helena MT. The show was at a town called Three Forks... and it was a National Guard machine.
They had the front cowl open for awhile and you could see that big radial...

Kinda impressive... and odd... at the same time... the way the engine was
situated any way. And yes... they were loud.

Thanks again,

OCR

hoeman600

11-13-2008, 05:26 AM

one of our operators used to fly for carson they did this kind of work all over us and canada. http://www.carsonhelicopters.com/index.htm their based out of pa and oragen. their shop is about 10 miles away from me.

RonG

11-14-2008, 03:56 AM

I checked YouTube and found a few videos of the H34 so that you can hear how loud they are.The vids don't really do them justice but you can still hear that they were loud.
There is one vid of the turbine powered crane that was featured in this post which prompted my first reply.Enjoy.Ron G
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=H34+Helicopter&search_type=&aq=f

OCR

11-14-2008, 04:16 AM