One of the journeymen I worked with during my apprenticeship Red says "Get on the ball and I'll give you a ride down." from the top of a concrete plant I was working on, 20' no biggie I thinks.
Two common types of cranes, hydraulic and conventional. Hydraulic winches are power up and power down. Conventional the winches are operated by gears, clutches, and brakes. I get on the headache ball, Red swings me away from the plant and engages the clutch on the winch and DOWN I go
. 3' from the ground he mashes on the brakes to "catch" me
. On another occasion we were working together and the foreman on that particular project was giving him a bunch of crap, "I should do to that guy like I did to the foreman at LA Harbor. He wanted a ride on the ball from the dock we were working on at lunchtime and he was giving me a bunch of ****. So I told him Sure get on. I swung him off the pier, hit the clutch and dropped him over the water, caught him, and shut off the rig for lunch."