I only have a non tailing homemade version i welded up and i absolutely love it. I wanna add a much better fairlead with rollers, and thinking about doing a big rigging bollard and winch setup on a little hand cart, walk it up to the tree, lean it up, winch it tight, and then I'm all set up for all sorts of rigging scenarios in one fell swoop. I use it often with a big right angle drill, and it's just pushing a button and watching it work, especially after i added a wheelbarrow tire as a self tailer on different mounts i use with it. A good way to add a mount is to weld on a receiver tube and then use the hitch mounted base, so you can move it around as needed for different jobs. So i built a hitch base for mine too, and I liked it so much i added it as a chipper winch. I built a crane thing on it to give it lift and for lifting/loading bigger pieces and things, but even without all that it's a decent winch for a smaller chipper and smaller outfit. If you set it high enough you can use a garbage can for the rope to go in, really helps managing line when winching stuff with a drill. If you have a log arch that lifts when you push down the handle it'll work great for pulling bigger pieces and logs too, lifting most of the weight off the ground and onto the wheels and gently setting it down when the line is slacked.
Think of it as a tugger or winch, cause that's what it is. Anytime you want to pull on a line it's an option, either for pulling trees over to the lay, tensioning rigging lines, hoisting, etc. In the tree it gives you many different rigging options that were unavailable or simply too awkward to use before, and it can move material on the ground as well, and do really good at it. You can use it to winch a climber up in the tree using a rigging line, just pull slack out of your climb line as you go up so you're protected and not relying on a rigging line for life support, so it's kinda like a poor guy's power ascender. Not as good as a dedicated one I'm sure, but a free ride is a free ride, and it can be used to pull you over on traverses too. Very handy on small crews so the climber can come down at will to help or take a break, and if you're out on a limb away from your tie in point simply add a block there to redirect the rigging line and you can come right back to where you left off. To get back on top of the limb easily stop high enough to lanyard in, remove the rigging line from your bridge and run some slack down, then either use a foot ascender or a foot wrap on the rigging line to lift your feet up to the block so you can just step up and you're back on top. If it doesn't have a cleat for locking it off (would the self tailer count for that?) just learn the simple towboat hitch and you can tie it off easily just using the capstan.
You can also rig up a rudimentary boom off of a tree for lifting, swinging, and loading stuff, I've done that on jobs before to use as a crane to load the logs and brush bundles right off the arbor trolley onto a truck or trailer, which could save you a trip if it's a smaller job and you didn't bring a mini or something, or even worse no access. Use the grcs as the load (or hoist) line if not booming up, or even as the luffing line and lower the hoist line with a different friction device if you need to boom up for what you're doing. You would be amazed at how well a little derrick rigged up with simple components can be, and with a grcs and a drill and ideally another friction device to raise and lower the boom you have all you need for a rudimentary crane, and with a chainfall or similar (masdam puller maybe?) you can even luff the boom under load (raise and lower it).
It's a similar technique as lifting a limb off of a structure, where you lift the tips with the grcs after rigging the butt up to hold it up and control it, and then pull it around with tag lines. The last 4 pictures are when i had to do exactly that on my house when i was sick, rigged it all from the ground and picked it up, swung it to an open area, then lowered it, easy peasy even when i couldn't physically do much at all. When I'm wanting to swing branches over a structure I'll do the same thing, and since you can lift up and take the weight you can easily control the position of the tips and lift enough to get past other obstructions like a chimney. Since it can raise limb tips you can also break off snap type cuts after the climber repositions into a safe location, and can even rock it back and forth by pulling and lowering a few times if it wants to hold on. Tag lines are also a huge help with this sometimes, and with 2 of them opposing each other you have total control of a limb. Another good trick when swinging leads like that is to clove hitch the limb where you want to tie it on the top, and catch the tips with the tail of the rope and let it just hang, sometimes even with a few speedline slings if you can't take it all at once. This moves the center of gravity between your 2 rigging points because you no longer have the leverage past the end, but rather at the end, so you sometimes don't even have to climb way out to make sure you're not gonna tip it on the structure.
