Rain...

A fairly large weekend storm brought a lot of ice to the lower valleys especially around Lake Champlain.  The higher elevations on the other hand saw warmer temperatures (40-50's) along with wind and rain.  This made the snow melt - fast.  It's unfortunate to see the snow melt so quickly but it is better than getting damaging ice.  We took advantage of the melting snow to get the saftey shutoff wire laid out.

We decided to leave the wire on the ground instead of hanging it.  We ended up using old single pair telephone wire. 

Jay got started an hour earlier (I was still working on our backup generator).  When I arrived Jay had already finished installing the throttle.

 The throttle will allow us to maintain a steady speed (without having to have someone sit in the truck or place a brick on the gas pedal).

We also figured out which wire we needed to break in order to stop the engine.  We pulled the wire up to the top of the hill.  We were short 150' so we'll have to add that on later.  We plan to have 5 or so shutoff buttons on the hill to allow someone to stop the tow anywhere on the hill.

We closed a loop back to the truck from the first shutoff to test it.  We wanted to see if we can start and stop it off a loop (without having to install a relay).  It didn't work but hopefully by adding a relay it'll prevent a voltage drop on the loop in the truck.  Here is Jay working on the wire connection in the truck.

We also swapped out David's come-along so that we can return it to him (thanks David!). We replaced it with a more heavy duty come-along that's rated for 4 tons.