Hi all. I saw a very sad sight on the way to work this morning. I
live in Lake Elsinore,CA and drive through Corona to the way to work.
We had (and still are having) high Santa Ana winds yesterday, upwards of
50-60 mph in some areas (I saw 5 big rigs on their side on the way home
last night). There's a 72' tower right off the 15 fwy just South of
the 91 and I noticed that recently a large monobander (15 mtr I think)
was taken down and a stack of 4 or 5 uhf/vhf antennas was put up in it's
place. Well, you guessed it, the tower was folded completely in half
this morning right about at the 40' joint (btw, this appears to be a 72'
4 section self supporting crank-up) and the antennas were at ground
level. I don't know who the ham is that lives there but my condolences
go to him. It appears that a crane will have to be brought in to do
damage repair since there's no way to crank it back down now.
I am very surprised. I'd have figured that a large hf antenna would
have presented more load than even several uhf/vhf antennas but maybe
the fact that several of them were quite high on a 20' mast added to the
perceived load presented to the tower. I guess this is a lesson to us
all, observe tower loading specs. I was worried about my X9 but the
wind didn't get quite as bad down in my area.
73's and hopefully no more wind.
WB6YAW
Jim
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