We has a blast again this year at the National Pike digging show in Brownsville PA. Steve and his son Mike brought his giant dragline and I brought most of my construction fleet. My cable Hoe got a lot of attention and many full scale operators ran it and enjoyed it. One guy Nick showed me how to run his 10B cable hoe and it was a blast, I ran it for about 45 minutes. It was a little easier to operate than a dragline. You just had to be sure to clutch the hoist right away when you let the bucket out so the bucket didn't drop when you were dumping. Steve made a nice dirt pile for us using a 1:1 skid steer. He made multiple levels to the site that worked well for the cable hoe loading trucks. The dirt had lots of rocks in it so Steve made a nice pile of cleaner dirt for me to dig in with my smaller equipment using his dragline. I made a haul road up one side of the site that was fun to run on.
As usual there were some unique full scale pieces of equipment at the show this year. There was an articulated tip/dump truck that both the dump bed and steering was electric powered and worked very well. I actually helped the guy unload it (helped guide it off the flatbed) I sat up on it and the dash was nothing but gauges and switches to steer it, very cool. He was towing it with a beautiful Autocar Rig (didn't have my camera with me at the time) that he showed all of the custom work that was done to the inside of it. A friend Sam that I met last year that likes to run my equipment and lets me run some of his full scale equipment had a "traxcavaor" it is a Cat loader with a bucket attachment on it and I helped him fix the bucket trip mechanism and he let me operate that for quite a while. Most of the equipment I mentioned is in the these videos so enjoy.
RC Models
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF2PF9d1Kss
Full scale equipment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRxBpOnc3pw