On 29 May 2021 10:01:05 GMT, Tim+ wrote:

snip

I hired a towable one

I think this was 'self propelled' and was delivered.

to paint the front and sides of my house and it was
just brilliant. I did have one incident though. It had four extendable
legs with feet that needed to be wound down firmly at each corner and motor
cut-out switches in each leg to prevent you using it without winding the
feet down.

That sounds like a better solution. I'm not sure the one mate hired
had that (as I think you could move it whilst being up on the
platform).

I discovered that if you don’t wind the feet down really firmly, it was
possible when the lifting arm was at full lateral reach, it reduced the
load on the diametrically opposite foot enough to cause the cut-out switch
to trip leaving you stranded up in the air.

Doh! The tower crane I wired allowed you to lower or bring a load in,
not lift or extend a load, once the 'overload' was tripped.

It’s at times like these you bless the invention of mobile phones. ;-)

Quite. ;-)

Cheers, T i m