When the shyte nearly hits the fan

[the evil twin]

Interesting reading, Helicopter winching exercise, the cable fouled, the safety link designed to protect the Chopper does its thing and... nek minnet... everybody packs their undies.

Betcha the winch operator saw his life flash before his eyes

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/ho...22-h0m3z7.html

[PeeBee]

Had a similar situation out in the mines. I dropped down to watch as the maintenance crew lifted a bore pump from a 200m deep bore. The guys clamp the hose, then lift it and the pump in stages. They got to stage 3 and had about 80m of hose out of the bore, and the hose clamp failed - the hose started unravelling back down the bore and at a great rate of knots, basically everyone on the ground ran and luckily the crane operator was able to do an emergency drop of the boom to ground - the hose 'sort of' got slowed to a tangled stop without further incident. Its amazing how far you can run in 5 seconds when your life looks in jeopardy! That incident was quickly 'buried' and after some minor repairs they were able to seperate the crane from the hose and remove the assy with a new clamp. Lucky happened on a Sunday otherwise a lynch mob would have been formed and a couple of guys would have lost their jobs.

[Hodge]

We were running several K's of transmission earth cable. Basically, the very small cable you see on top of the transmission towers. Protects the main cables from lightning strikes. We used recovery/load out winches, like the one pictured below. Slightly smaller scale though.
During this particular run, the cable wasn't even sagged/under tension. It was still very "loose", but the sheer weight of it still put a bit of load on the trailer.
At one point, the cable trailer jolted. Me and a workmate just looked at each other. It was pretty clear that there was a terrified "run" look on both of our faces...

PeeBee is spot on. It's amazing how you can become Usain Bolt in a matter of milliseconds. I'm confident I ran an acre paddock in seconds, expecting at any moment for the cable to start swishing around behind me like a steel tornado... But it wasn't to be. Lucky.
One of the strands somewhere on the cable run let go. It was 1 out of 12 strands, but still enough to jolt the system. But even at cable weight only tension, if this thing begins whipping through the air after tension break, it'll slice everything in sight like a sushi knife. Especially human flesh.

One of my most memorable pucker moments.