Working the National 1300A

"Seems his rented excavator had gotten too close to the hole"

You can't turn your back on those rental excavators, they will do the strangest stuff.

Later, the same day, I had somehow failed to notice this motel going up, just hadn't been in that part of town I guess. From a distance, all I saw was a lot of OSB, and my first thought was WHO DID THE CRANE WORK? They had it pretty well covered, a big SLC contractor has his own mini tower crane, there are none in my area, based here anyway. I never did see it run, I sat and drank coffee for half an hour right after lunch, and finally gave up. I was wondering what the line and trolly speed was going to be like.

Then today, flew 45 miles to eyeball this truss job I'm doing tomorrow, on the left, looks like a big ag building. But what caught my eye were the two giant slipinslides. I had to planned to land, until I saw there was no snow, and though I'm on the wheel skis now, the tires are small enough to make me a lot more cautious then the big bush tires I'm on all summer. I had fun anyway, plus I know how to find the place now driving.

skyking1 said:

"Seems his rented excavator had gotten too close to the hole"

You can't turn your back on those rental excavators, they will do the strangest stuff.

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from what I see there. a very inexperienced operator

petepilot said:

from what I see there. a very inexperienced operator

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that was tongue-in-cheek for "should not have an excavator off flat ground".

Yeah he's NOT a heavy equipment operator, but in the situation he managed to get it in, I don't know if an expert could have extracted himself or not. Maybe.... I know those things have some incredible abilities in the proper hands.
Looking at my truss setting job tomorrow: the tag line will be on the prevailing down wind end, and I'll be looking right into the sun. If they had dumped those trusses on the left side of the building it would have been much better from my perspective, but they think like carpenters. Nothing I hate worse then having to babysit a guy on the tag line, modifying how I want to swing the trusses just so they can keep the line clear, and many don't seem to understand the concept of not being able to push on a rope.

Natman said:

but in the situation he managed to get it in, I don't know if an expert could have extracted himself or not. Maybe.... I know those things have some incredible abilities in the proper hands

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With the bucket on the ground in the hole, most guys would have either turned it away from the hole pushing themselves away, or just walked it right down into the hole and dug their way out of one end or the other. But that's with a guy that can run the stick and the tracks at the same time, which it sounds (and looks) like is out of his skill range. Hopefully he pays his way out of his learning experience, and doesn't turn it into his insurance as a "incident" and we all get to pay for it.

It was a rental, and for some reason when I offered to send the rental outfit some pictures he declined! That bound up track, almost thrown, on the uphill side, with the other in the air, complicated things, we were all surprised that once he got the bucket around, eliminating the tip over hazard, that he couldn't finagle it out. It wasn't until he told me that the uphill track was a no/go that I cut him some slack....I flew over the day after, and judging from the tracks, the 80 ton was at least able to drive right out, I don't know if those Terex rigs like that have AWD or what but I'd bet it was close to getting stuck, got lucky. I'll be going back to set trusses eventually, and we can all laugh about then, maybe.

Man whoever stacked the counterweights on that self erector did a bang up job.

It’s got a Bronson crane decal. They’re the biggest self erector dealer in the states.

And they’re not as fast as a good operator on a hydraulic crane. The difference isn’t huge tho. They’re just a heck of a lot cheaper then a comparable hydraulic crane and it’s remote controlled. So now your operator is also the rigger. Or he can be the one landing the loads.

looks to be either an igo36 or Igo50.

I don't know what he paid for that Crane rental, but it might have been cheaper to have someone who knows how to run excavator bring another machine, in stuff some dirt underneath it, and drive it off. All it would take is a mini.
That's how a dirt hand thinks though

Pretty amazing, the reach and the small set up size required. It takes two semi's to transport I was told.
Another impressive rig, making a 1500' high below the hook pick of 3600 pounds, at a radius of 2 miles! They were scattering straw on a burned hillside, about 1/2 mile from my yard in town, a good show.

Those K-Max helicopters can do a lot for how small they look. Really fun to watch the intermeshing rotors spool up.

Makes me wonder why ALL helicopters aren't built that way. When I pulled in the (unmarked, no keep out ) area they were working out of, just far enough off the highway to be out of the way of traffic, I was able to watch for several minutes. Then a lady walked over, and before she said anything I told her I was a crane guy and a pilot, and I was enjoying the show. She wasn't impressed, and said, "if you want to watch, do it across the road," booted me outa there nicely! I'd seen enough and drove off, and really, I was as close as I wanted to be, and they probably should have had that turn off blocked off but I'm glad they didn't.

In the summer of 2018 we had a lot of forest fires here and this one was flying out of our airport for 2 weeks.

This pick was going great, hanging level, square, etc., until the carpenters started fighting each other on inserting the beams into the beam pockets. One pulling, the guy on the other end pushing, no communication, one of those times where I'm glad to just do what I'm told and leave the thinking to others. I've learned to keep my mouth shut, unless I see something really dangerous, this was never that, just ugly. Turned out fine in the end.

About half an hour later setting trusses, we had a man go down, to his knees anyway. He was climbing over an icy truss in such a way that when he slipped, the top chord end up contacting his nether regions and he had to take 5 until he recovered. First time i've seen that happen on a job, poor bugger.

I had a 23 K concrete tank to set in a very tight area, as in narrow. The 80 ton Terex I could have handed the job over to wouldn't have made the entry into the area, and would have been too far away for it's chart. The construction company I was working for has a 50 ton RT crane that would have been good but it was tied up in another town and this was a hurry up job. I made sure the crew (a good one luckily, I had worked with before) were fully aware of the limitations of the 30 ton National, and how tight it was going to be, just to make sure we were all on the same page. After I offloaded the semi out in front of the project, I got set up in back, short jacked on one side. Then their excavator was just barely able to pick and carry the tank and its components, with air visible under the rear of the tracks. To get it close enough to me, they had to crawl between the foundation walls, with less than an inch clearance on both sides. Everything about this job was tight and maxxed out. My left rear/most important outrigger was 1/4" from the foundation wall, with the 10' deep excavation right along side the footing. I assumed the foundation would hold otherwise I would never setup so close to a hole like that. The crew I was working with had poured it, and assured me it had the required rebar in it ( I asked) and the ground was compacted and largely undisturbed.
After we rigged my 30 ton load block for a 3 part line, (font changed, don't know why...) I picked it up and while still holding it away from the excavation just a couple inches off the ground, got out of the cab and told them now we were going to just give it a few minutes, 3 or 4, do a final check before swinging over the hole and getting fully committed. During this hold, I pointed to the 2" natural gas line I would be within 3 or 4" inches of, and as a joke said something like "that's not hot, right?" I was told it was heating half the school, being fully active. Of course! Once I swung it around and started winching down, I got the expected "boom down", as I did, I was getting to the end of my chart and told them so, as I didn't want to get in a position where I could not boom it back, and the hole was so tight getting it jammed up catti wampus was a concern, not in or out all the way, that would have been a real problem. So real slow, and 2 minutes later it touched down perfect.
When I billed for this job, (didn't do anything, font changed) I did something I had never done before, I made a note about needing a 3 part line and charged them $25.00 more an hour, my usual rate didn't seem near enough.

Sometimes hiring the professional is a requirement, not an option. Well done!

I don't know what enlarged my pictures like that, maybe it's just my computer but the entire site is all screwed up on my end, something has changed?

OK, now this site is back to normal, from my end anyway, and i see the pictures are too.

Made a 7800' lb pick today of a 6' dia. fiberglass pipe for an underground irrigation canal. I love these weird/unusual type jobs....the original system was all concrete, put in in 1905, once out in the country, now in suburbia so they have to be more sneaky how and where it transits from point A to B. Once I set it in the open trench, the crew inside the tunnel rigged onto it with a "pipe puller", a purpose made grabber that hooked to an electric winch further inside the tunnel, and the crew sucked it in until it mated up with a huge HDPM rubber grommet. This tunnel was 1/2 mile long, between the above ground points, and I got permission to walk into a ways, about 50' was far enough to satisfy my curiosity, if I had wanted to I could have come out 1/2 mile away. This glass pipe is rated for a 100 year life span. I gained some points with the crew, when I told them all the water that feeds this system comes from a fairly small underground spring fed pond about 20 miles way, something I knew from flying over this whole area for decades. The huge gravity flow irrigation systems we have out west are amazing engineering, and fun to check out from the air. No pictures darn it.

The gravity water was the main stay of mining and farming with aqueducts going around the side of mountain, even wood was used on the side of a mountain to carry water long distances. I bet they stand out very well flying low, used to be able to see them when flying at 10K stretching for miles. A lot of back breaking work for sure!

I wasn't able to get the story on this "overheating" event, whether it was powerline line inspired or not, but they did say it was going to be rebuilt.

Another small tower crane, taking food out of my mouth! Luckily I have plenty of other work and am actually a bit relieved I didn't get tied up in this large apartment/condo complex job. It's hard to keep my regular customers happy when the big projects come along, and those regular customers will still be there after the big project is finished. This project is using all pre fabbed walls, framed and sheeted, and the tower crane makes perfect sense to me, much more cost effective then I would be.