Andrew McEwan

Maybe try and find a clean husky 350, and if not quick enough get Spud to port it, my ported one is ok on an 18 but obviously better on 15, and certainly lighter than my 550, with same nice handling/balance and flickability with better hot starting.

What was the difference in dbh between the two visits Steve? And how many reductions?

Forgot to say I have the side control kit for the crane if you want to get your FMOC with it, as well as lots of other random kit like forklift, towing T bar etc, and can until the trailer goes can help with delivery. I'm not a machinery trainer but also happy if someone is new to the kit to spend time showing them round it, moving some logs round the yard etc.

At the risk of turning this into a for sale thread I'm also very regrettably shutting up shop on the alpine tractor side of my business, first few implement adverts on arbtrader today but all the kit is going. Based around a low hours 2014 AGT850, it has been my ideal setup and excelled itself on rural arb and small forestry jobs. Fast across sites, and about as much tractor power (+ an implement) as you can move easily with a 3.5ton towing set up, the TP chipper on it is faster that a lot of 8inch road tows, and the winch and skidding grapples speed and power saves a lot of time on the right jobs, also has very recent AGT front 3pl kit and hydraulics. Lots of photos on mcewanforestry on FB, but the kit list is (all new to me) AGT850, TP175 pto chipper, Country 3.9m crane and trailer, RSL skidding grapple, Balfour 9 ton splitter, Uniforest 35m pto winch, Dragone140 flail and an ifor GP146 tri axle. I'm only selling to help get on the housing ladder and plan to focus on my consultancy work and smaller contracting jobs. A lot of thought and far too much research went into the set up, and it's all the best kit for the task that I could find. Ideally I'd keep it all to retirement, but can't justify it, and hopefully the set up or parts of it will be as much of an asset to another business as it has been to mine.

To fill your person spec and get someone decent I think you need to up the ££.

Still not a helpful original spec then, as you have to consider the risk of whiplash failure with those long static cable runs. I'd say with old high up steel cable it's even more important to consider installing upper synthetic cable, and same advice about aerial resistograph and winch testing first. Also don't need to tell you of the impact of repeated reductions on the trees ability to lay down new tissue to cope with the altered loading from static bracing. Minor extra point, have seen a fair few steel cable installs done with incorrect clamping, so would be dubious if they would hold under a big whiplash load anyway, worth checking for.

I would be taking my resistograph up there on that kind of aerial inspection, and also some rachet straps/small winch. Both to test the areas and unions around the rods. Have often recommended and installed sythentic bracing above old rods to reduce failure risk. From the your description rods weren't the right way to go to start with, best left for short span/lower down codominant issues if they are used at all.

Lets take a decay prone species and reduce it's crown so much that it knackers the ability to lay down new tissue around any basal defect, clever!

It can act as a fairly benign saprotroph, but have seen a lot of purple plum with it near the end of things, is it growing in the lawn? treat it to a nice mulch round the base?

Likely Phellinus pomaceus Steve, maybe some tlc could help but likely for the firewood/tuning pile if it's dropping limbs.

I use Otiss software, and pretty happy with it. I learnt a lot about arb and forestry consultancy from working within a company before setting up on my own, worth a thought if you've not already done it that way. Best of luck with it