Yes I like the Lampson stuff! I had the great pleasure of meeting Neil Lampson himself in '96, at the Con Expo in Las Vegas, just before he passed away. The NCCCO was getting started as a testing criteria around the nation back then. He told me the story of how he couldn't sleep and would think, in bed at night, about a way to make the basic crane weight itself work as c/w, not just the rear chunks of c/w's. Then he sent a primitive looking pencil sketch to his engineers in the middle of the night and asked if what he invisioned could be built, and if so, could it possibly work. They said 'Yes in theory' to both and he said use one of our 3900's and build me one. They then were able to get the little 100 ton rig to pick and carry 400 tons, and so the Transi-lift prototype was born and the rest was history. Hey Donns, as an F&M MAFCO employee and world traveler, did you ever get any time around the Kulakoomba, I think that was what it was called? The unique and rare electric 1400 American Steel Erector rig that had an 8 o/r beam pedastal lower. The fully dressed out rig was rail mounted and moved down the tracks on a traveling bogie system. It eventually was set up for Wellstream by F&M MAFCO at the Port on a custom built concrete pad in Panama City Beach? Yes, the one that had 620' of Luffer and could still pick 120,000#. It was a urban legend for years, till it was rediscovered, pickled and crated in a remote jungle deep in South Africa? I was going to run it full time in our Florida panhandle, but the war and some questionable politics involving Haliburton brought my chances down to zero. They ultimately used an F&M MAFCO operator, on an on-call basis as needed, so my full time op' position went down the tube. I wouldn't be surprised if you were involved in that beast too.
