The winch you refered to in the link is significantly different to scotty, however similar in application.
The 'portable' winch in the link is for what appears to be a very wide range of heavy winching, varying from log snigs through to boat pulling.
Scotty uses a tanaka power head to drive the actual winch (pretty much the same size as a wipper snipper)
All up it weighs around 6-7kg. The most important distinction is that scotty is *purely* an access winch, rated for 250kg (rescue situation, 2 humans + gear).
As you might have noticed in the small amount of video Graeme puts on the net, the winch is controlled by him.
I mentioned this because due to the height seperation between climber and groundies, speech and visual communication is heavily impaired, so it is not practical to be instructing ground crew from there, let alone adjust his position. Even when using the static climbing lines, with over 350-400' of line out, tiny adjustments on the ground don't often match the change to the climber. This can pose serious problems if you are already approaching your highpoint.
From what my experience has been with the winch, to justify the cost, and sometimes setup time, it really needs to make the job more efficient. I'm not very familar in dealing with the big D.Fir's or Cali Redwoods since we dont get many in Australia, however I have noticed (proportional to the trunk diameter) that there are a LOT of small limbs, which start from the very bottom, and go right to the top. To set an initial access line and then manage to get clean access past all those limbs seems unrealisitic, let alone efficient. I imagine it'd be more cost effective to just climb and naw off as you go. (just my opinion...)
In contrast, for a similarly high Euc in our area, we might have 100' feet to the first limb, but that limb is the same size as a 90ft tree. If we have six 250' trees in a day to climb, the practicality of Graeme climbing 1500' and working effectively all day is silly and unnecessary.
In a very round-about way, I am suggesting that if you are looking at buying a winch, consider the types of trees you intend to use it on, and whether the outlay will have good dividends in terms of efficiency for job and business. blah blah blah...........
