I had a little excitement today, working on a cell tower, very tight quarters, and at one point when booming back with just a 8' length of 1 1/4 pipe that was rigged with a very small round sling, it fell out of the my hook and dropped about 80', landing 35' away from me. It bent a bit of structure (cheap, re-bendable) above an equipment (expensive and sensitive stuff inside) container, but turns it that the structure was there for just that, protecting the gear from dropped items, including ice. My first thought was to blame the tower monkey's and a **** poor rigging job by them, I made this clear by throwing my hard hat out the op cab (working on a lawn) but refrained from yelling. Good thing, as after we all calmed down, I saw their rigging was still attached to the pipe....seems that when I boomed back a bit, and hit the stop at 78 degrees I think it is, the bit of a jerk got a little slack in the rigging (with such a little load)
and it hit the hook gate just right and opened it up. Wasn't a big jerk at all, but with no weight to speak off it jumped up and out.
A good spring on my gate, but it IS getting a bit weak, but in the future (tomorrow) we will be safetying the gate with a pip pin thru the locking hole, when working at my max boom angle and with such a light load. At the end of a long day, I usually say "nothing got bent and no one got hurt", couldn't say that today. I am glad to still have a windshield, etc. Nearest crew, beside me in the cab, were about 75' away, all wearing hard hats of course. The perf metal walkway steel took the hit.