The tallest, one-piece tower I have been associated with was a 70'
triangular self-supporter, about 4 feet on a side at the base. Back in
the '70s, I lived outside Philly, in Lansdale, PA, and I was on a hill.
About a mile away, I could see a ham tower on sort of the next hill
over. It had a 204BA and a 10/15 trapped yagi on it. One day, I stopped
over and talked to the owner - he was Bob, W3EK, a regional mktg manager
for GE Mobile Radio, and the tower had been custom made somewhere in
eastern PA by a welding shop that apparently made a lot of comm towers
for GE. It had been erected by crane in one piece.
Fast forward to the late 70's: I had gotten a job in Lynchburg, VA,
working for GE Mobile Radio as a design engineer, and a few months after
I hit town, Bob was transferred by GE to their Lynchburg headquarters.
He brought his tower with him! It was cut in half in PA, loaded on a
flatbed, and trucked to VA. The legs were sleeved and welded at the
cuts, and re-erected by a sign crane. I spent quite a bit of time on
that tower over the years, as Bob (then W4BB, now SK) did not climb.
When Bob moved to Florida in the late 80s, he gave the tower to a local
on the condition that he take it down. This fellow and I took the tower
down in four, 12 to 20 foot sections. We used a Rohn gin pole and a
porta-band saw, and just worked our way down the tower, lopping off
sections (as accurately as we could measure) and lowering them to the
ground. We left the bottom 20 feet intact and hinged it over at the base
with a rope over Bob's garage roof. A real fun day, as I recall...
After a few years, the other fellow decided he was never going to use
the tower, so he gave it to a mutual friend of ours, Larry, WA4FRH.
Larry got a welder to weld 4-bolt flanges to the mating sections of the
bottom three sections of the tower, I fabbed and welded a new top plate
for the third (now top) section, and we put it up about 10-12 years ago,
and since Larry is my nearest neighbor out on the farm, I drive by that
56' tower every day.
We rotated the base section into place (on the base hinge bolts on two
of the legs) using a "tower jack" on steroids - my JD track loader
bucket. The top two sections went up with a gin pole.
73,
geo - n4ua
> -----Original Message-----
> From: towertalk-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:towertalk-
> bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of DMartin560@aol.com
> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 7:28 AM
> To: kb2m@comcast.net; towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] FW: Rohn-25G Removal
>
>
> The tallest one-peice freestanding/self supporting tower I ever saw
was 20
> feet.
> But I have only been around towers for 22 years.
> KG4ADM
>
>
>
> I don't understand the confusion over this. How would you take down a
one
> piece freestanding tower? Here's how a set of tower jacks work....
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