Very nice! How easy is it to string the pendants?
they need to come out with a pile driving attachment for this model!
Nice Crane, My wife bought me one for Christmas last year. I've never operated or saw one with the offset boom so I took the links out to make a standard boom. I've also got the jib but don't know if I'll ever put it on. Very seldom would you see Crane on a Barge with a jib on it.
The Vicon system is for load lowering. Instead of a power down where you would release the lever and set the brake, shove the lever into power down and release the brake to lower the load the Vicon system applies power to the load determined by engine speed and how far you have the lever toggled in. On the older Manitowocs it was on a separate lever they called a Johnson bar. To pic a load you toggled in the drum lever then pulled on the Johnson bar while adding throttle til the load started to raise. When you were high enough you could let up on the Johnson bar until the load stopped raising. If you wanted to lower the load you let up a little more and it would start to come back down. Adding or subtracting throttle also increases or decreases line pull. Its a good system for making a lot of heavy pics. You can get in a rhythm where its like a yo yo. You never have to use the brake to hold the load. The newer Cranes had the Vicon system incorporated into the hoist lever. A couple draw backs to the system is you couldn't float the load. If you boomed up it would line up to. The other draw back was it required quite a bit of weight to work properly so on the older cranes that didn't have power down you had to free fall everything light. Sometimes it was hard to let things down gently. I know some of the newer Manitowocs had both a power down and a Vicon system. I've never ran one with both though.
Hope this doesn't confuse you to much. I'm having a hard time to explain it. If you have any questions I'll try to answer them.