> I have been told by the company that the cables need to be
> replaced approx every 3 years depending on the climate by
> a professional installer.
The wire rope (cable) on my MA550 rusted through and broke
during the 7th year! And, the rust was on the wire on the winch,
where most of it is when the tower is up. I had never applied
any of the wire rope lubricant/rust preventing "sprays" etc.
which are available. Also interesting is that it is only the cable
under tension which rusted on the winch! My tower lowering
fixture (tilt down) has a little heavier gage rope on it, and not
a trace of rust on that wire rope; seems these wire rope cables
have a tendency to corrode more quickly when under
tension, as pointed out by others on the reflector.
Re-stringing my tower was not possible; I can no longer
tilt down and remove the telescoped MA assembly because
of changes in our and the neighbor's yards. The MA type
towers must be laying on the ground, and the sections
pulled apart to do the re-cabling job. I opted to just
buy a new tower assembly from UST. Pulled the old
one out of the rotating base assembly using donated
crane time, and placed the new one at the time
with the crane again. Should you care to look,
all of this can be seen in photos at:
http://www.karc.net/Activities/Photokh7m.htm
The lower left thumbnail photo shows the "fate" of the
old MA, or at least two sections of it: donated to the
Kauai radio club, it is now one of our principal Field
Day antenna supports, and trailer mounted at that!
Ignore the photos of that guy in the lower right corner
thumbnails, hi.
I regularly apply a wire rope/rust inhibitor fluid to the
cable, or at least that part of it that is reachable on
the winch. Have tried to get it up to the higher stretches,
but is difficult using a sponge on a long pole! Stuff
is called Whitmore's Wire Rope Lubricant. It is
similar to other products of the sort.
Good luck and 73, Jim KH7M
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