The winch is used during the tour to fly dancers above the stage, then used for the encore to fly all five members of Boyzone to the 'B' stage and then back to the main stage.
Paul Jordan, director of Hoist UK comments, "The winch is a custom version of our popular range of pilewind winches and in its fully built condition it has ten rope drums spanning over seven metres. It is manufactured in modules housed in one metre custom sections of 52cm truss with each module containing two rope drums.
Tony Dickson, fellow director of Hoist UK adds, "Each of the drum modules are then linked using a drive shaft to the next module, and then to a central module containing the geared motor assembly. The winch is capable of a 20m lifting height with variable speed lifting and soft start and stop. It's also designed, manufactured and tested to our usual standard with all the relevant safety features in place for its intended purpose."
Mark Wade, director of Over The Top Rigging adds, "It was great to work with Paul and Tony from Hoist UK. The system they have supplied me worked great for the Boyzone tour and it's perfect for the touring industry, as I can connect as many of the drum modules as needed for the job. The system is really simple for me to control and gets the desired visual effect. I now have a piece of equipment in my fleet which is flexible enough to use on a whole host of future shows."
(Jim Evans)
