Wednesday, Mar 03, 2010 at 11:23
Dennis
Thanks for you assessment of my knowledge based on your assumption I am simply a tour operator.
I am in fact a qualified workplace trainer with a great deal of experience in winching. I run a business that not only offers tours, but trains mining company personnel, exploration personnel, and private individuals. We train Ambulance officers in basic and advanced 4wd skills including advanced recoveries. I am qualified to deliver the following training and have extensive experience delivering the following training.
- Drive and recover 4WD vehicle. (Mining,
recreation, Forestry)
- Drive 4WD vehicle in Difficult Terrain Using Advanced Techniques
- Operate Light vehicle - Coal Surface Operations
and many others.
Your "professional" tour operator may
well be professional that is to say he does it for a living. But how long has he been doing it? Was he the business owner or someone employed on the day to run that tour? Was he a trainer? Was he experienced at winching. I see lots of so called professional tour operators doing lots of stupid things that in my 30 years of experience of traveling and working in the bush have taught me not to do.
You are right to claim being a tour operator doesn't make me an expert on driving and recovering a 4wd. My 30 years of experience, my formal qualifications and my qualifications to teach others these skills however does.
Is there more I can learn? Yes and I do every day. Did I say you MUST never assist a winch?- No I did not. What I said was you need to have knowledge and apply that knowledge while assessing all of the risks.
In my experience, a properly setup recovery with a winch rarely requires assistance from the vehicle, and if it does, then that assistance needs to be as Kiwi Kia said, very gentle.
If his winch failed due to being as you say undercapacity, then it simply highlights what I said earlier, he and many very experienced people do not understand the winch has very limited capability in a single line pull. You must know it''s capabilities, and operate within them. generally if you need to assist the winch, this indicates you could probably do with another pulley. Granted it may be easier to just assist, however, if you do, you must assess the risk of doing so and take appropriate precautions.
BTW I have no doubt a couple of
young blokes from the bush have more practical sense than some tour operator employees. That is why I run my tours myself, I've worked a great deal in the bush, in 4WD vehicles on properties and in other industries. I've had fencing contracts, worked as a ringer, operated cranes, excavators, trucks, loaders etc etc etc. I've worked underground, in laboratories, on boats, in aquaculture etc etc. I've worked as a war zone freelance photographer and photojournalist.
I think your assessment of my qualifications was perhaps a little hasty.
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