Wooooooo!
and likewise, Hoooooo!
I've had a Horror-Fright quality engine crane (tho not actually from HF) for years. Plenty adequate for my occasional use, plus the legs fold up and it stores in a relatively small footprint.
One disadvantage to the "fold 'em/store 'em" cranes is that with the boom all the way down in storage position, it takes a LOT of pumps on the long ram jack to get the boom up far enough to extend it, much less actually lift anything with it. For some time now, I've lusted after an air-over-hydraulic jack to put on it.
Dicking around with that generator brought the idea to the surface again and seeing as I've made a couple of bucks off Dale this month, I looked around for one. Initially, the $170-ish price tag put me off, but I found one on Amazon for $110 and free Prime shipping, so I jumped on it.
It appears to be identical (and quite probably is...) to the one Northern Hydraulic wanted $170 plus shipping for.
Just got done installing it. Had to machine the bottom bracket a little as it missed being wide enough to fit the crane mount by this much. Other than that, it's a bolt-on and it works slick as a smelt. It's an air hog. I'd hate to try to run it off a portable air tank, but in the shop it's fine.
Haven't tried to actually LIFT anything under air, but even if it just gets the boom to operating position without wearing my pumping arm out, it's worth the investment to me.
In other news, there's a $700 J-head Bridgeport for sale within reasonable driving distance. I drooled over the ad for some time, but that pesky Reality kept giving me the stink eye. No tooling and really, no reasonable place to put it, especially for something that would get used once every other Blue Moon. If I were 20 years younger maybe, but it just doesn't make any sense now.