Malcolm Shaw from Norton Tree Services was probably the first arborist in New Zealand to use the Honda powered Portable Winch to 'persuade' a back-leaner to drop in the right direction.
That was back in 2009.While the motor is running on the Portable Winch the capstan continues to rotate, even when in the engine is in slow mode. Many users find this feature problematic until they get used to its operation.
The continually revolving capstan can make it difficult to 'feather' the winch line, clutch-like for precision, without risk of rope melt.
The simple solution to the problem is to stop the engine altogether, as you can see in the Reg Coates YouTube clip above.
The video records Reg and company doing, more-or-less, the same job Malcolm did back in '09 using the Portable Winch.
In Malcolm's case the very location of the job eliminated the possibility of using a truck or digger to pull over the back-leaner.
>But Reg could have easily chucked the pulling rope on his ute. In doing so he would have lost all the precision he achieves with the use of the Portable Winch.
Note the stop-starting of the engine by Reg's groundie. The stop/start procedure was to get around the rope 'feathering' issue but, as you can see, this does not impede the precision of the work.
