Some good thoughts there, if we go get a tower for Gary. I'll remember to
bring along several sections of ROHN 25 to lay at the front of the trailer
to keep the weight on the ball. Good to know this stuff. Thanks.
-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces@contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of
towertalk-request@contesting.com
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 11:17 PM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: TowerTalk Digest, Vol 96, Issue 10
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Shipping Companies (David Gilbert)
2. Re: Shipping Companies (Mike)
3. Breaking all the tower climbing rules at an (Jim Thomson)
4. Re: Shipping Companies (jimlux)
5. Re: Shipping Companies (Roger (K8RI))
6. Re: Shipping Companies (Jon Pearl - W4ABC)
7. Re: Breaking all the tower climbing rules at an (Rick Karlquist)
8. Re: Breaking all the tower climbing rules at an (Robert West)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:18:33 -0700
From: David Gilbert <xdavid@cis-broadband.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Shipping Companies
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Message-ID: <4CF85379.2090609@cis-broadband.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
That is not a idle consideration. About 40 years ago my then wife and I
were relocating to a new QTH with all of our belongings packed into an
overloaded U-Haul trailer being towed by our car. At one point my wife
was driving at a conservative speed (well less than the speed limit) in
the right hand lane of a major highway ... three lanes in each direction
with a median between them. Suddenly the trailer started to violently
oscillate side to side, increasing in sideways travel with each swing.
Unfortunately my wife touched the brakes to try to slow down, which only
aggravated the situation. The trailer tossed us back and forth for what
seemed like an eternity, literally picked the rear of the car off the
ground a few times, and then deposited us on the median pointed the
direction from which we had just come. Luckily there were no other
vehicles around us at the time and nobody was injured ... and I'm amazed
to this day that the hitch held.
We had already driven for several hours at that same speed, and the
stretch of highway where all this happened was the smoothest stretch of
road you'd ever want to see. My car suspension was tight (I had beefed
it up with stiffer springs, etc) and the trailer had no defects. The
problem was strictly due to the combination of too much weight in the
wrong place in the trailer.
This is one of those situations where conservatism could save your life,
or more importantly that of someone else.
73,
Dave AB7E
On 12/2/2010 6:14 PM, EZ Rhino wrote:
> One other thing I haven't heard mentioned yet. Putting a 2k pound tower
that is 22' long (nested) on a typical 16' or 18' car hauler flatbed trailer
means you've got several feet of tower sticking out the rear. This means
the weight is not centered over the axles; in fact, it is too far over the
rear end. Guess what happens when you start moving at freeway speeds? The
trailer will sway, possibly violently, and can easily cause an accident. A
certain amount of tongue weight needs to be maintained to prevent this.
Putting the tower on the trailer with the base end toward the tow vehicle is
important; more weight may be needed to get it right. A quick side trip to
Home Despot for some 80 pound sacks of concrete to put on the front of the
trailer can provide enough ballast to make it tow without swaying. The
aforementioned boat trailer works nicely for towers because the axles are
further to the rear to handle the rearward weight of boats.
>
> I hauled a buddy's US TOwer HDX572 on my trailer and it did sway a bit at
about 60mph (or faster). We only had to move it about 10 miles, so we kept
the speed down and it was fine.
> Chris
> KF7P
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 19:04:46 -0800
From: "Mike" <noddy1211@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Shipping Companies
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Message-ID: <00b901cb9296$d826eb10$8874c130$@net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
This is why a twin axle boat trailer with a long tongue works well for the
purpose of hauling a tower. It is designed for a tail heavy load. I pulled
a 70 foot crank up tower from Skips in Socal up to Norcal at 65 -70 MPH with
problems. We loaded with an Engine hoist and I unloaded also with an engine
hoist.
Mike
-----Original Message-----
That is not a idle consideration. About 40 years ago my then wife and I
were relocating to a new QTH with all of our belongings packed into an
overloaded U-Haul trailer being towed by our car. At one point my wife
was driving at a conservative speed (well less than the speed limit) in
the right hand lane of a major highway ... three lanes in each direction
with a median between them. Suddenly the trailer started to violently
oscillate side to side, increasing in sideways travel with each swing.
Unfortunately my wife touched the brakes to try to slow down, which only
aggravated the situation. The trailer tossed us back and forth for what
seemed like an eternity, literally picked the rear of the car off the
ground a few times, and then deposited us on the median pointed the
direction from which we had just come. Luckily there were no other
vehicles around us at the time and nobody was injured ... and I'm amazed
to this day that the hitch held.
We had already driven for several hours at that same speed, and the
stretch of highway where all this happened was the smoothest stretch of
road you'd ever want to see. My car suspension was tight (I had beefed
it up with stiffer springs, etc) and the trailer had no defects. The
problem was strictly due to the combination of too much weight in the
wrong place in the trailer.
This is one of those situations where conservatism could save your life,
or more importantly that of someone else.
73,
Dave AB7E
On 12/2/2010 6:14 PM, EZ Rhino wrote:
> One other thing I haven't heard mentioned yet. Putting a 2k pound tower
that is 22' long (nested) on a typical 16' or 18' car hauler flatbed trailer
means you've got several feet of tower sticking out the rear. This means
the weight is not centered over the axles; in fact, it is too far over the
rear end. Guess what happens when you start moving at freeway speeds? The
trailer will sway, possibly violently, and can easily cause an accident. A
certain amount of tongue weight needs to be maintained to prevent this.
Putting the tower on the trailer with the base end toward the tow vehicle is
important; more weight may be needed to get it right. A quick side trip to
Home Despot for some 80 pound sacks of concrete to put on the front of the
trailer can provide enough ballast to make it tow without swaying. The
aforementioned boat trailer works nicely for towers because the axles are
further to the rear to handle the rearward weight of boats.
>
> I hauled a buddy's US TOwer HDX572 on my trailer and it did sway a bit at
about 60mph (or faster). We only had to move it about 10 miles, so we kept
the speed down and it was fine.
> Chris
> KF7P
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------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 19:12:52 -0800
From: "Jim Thomson" <jim.thom@telus.net>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Breaking all the tower climbing rules at an
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Message-ID: <E37D3D88A7A84B6D99A6EF11BBE412BC@JimboPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:38:01 +0000
From: Paul_group <paul_group@greenrover.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Breaking all the tower climbing rules at an
amazing height...
On 02/12/2010 13:33, n4zkf wrote:
> Horse Hockey! "The safer a situation seems to be breeds complacency,
that's
> when accidents happen"
> That's the biggest bunch of BS I have heard in years.
Agreed!
>
> Sorry for the soapbox guys but when I hear this stuff my blood boils. 100%
> tie off at all times! Period!
Someone earlier asked how much people got paid for working like this,
let me answer that simply:
If an employee or contractor of mine worked like that, he would not get
paid.. and would never work for us again.
73 de Paul GW8IZR IO73TI
http://www.gw8izr.com
## at the telco I worked at for 34 yrs, anytime anybody is working >85'...
you
are paid double time. These days, that amounts to aprx $63.50 per hr.
I started when I was 20 yrs old back in 1976. The 64 yr old, old geezers'
that
were there at the time, had been there since 1932, and no accidents on
their watch either. Zero
accidents in the 34 yrs I was there. None of the various towers were over
200'.
Average wage for a tower climber in the usa these days is $18.50 per hr.
Remember
that 1 hr TV documentary a couple of yrs back on NBC, depicting us
contractor's working on
various cell tower's ? They had deaths left, right, and center. Some of the
tower climber's
depicted in the documentary were later killed, and the funeral was also part
of the same documentary.
Then the owner of the tower climbing business is pissed off, since he had to
shell out Just over $1000.00
for bit's and pieces of new safety gear, after inspecting everyone's
climbing gear! This is your typ non union
jerk run organization, low wages, safety last, climb or get fired. Where I
worked, the employee's had the final say
in whether a structure was safe to climb, not the boss. Do these idiot's
even have a health and safety committee?
## I wouldn't trust those step pegs farther than I could throw em. Esp
the super long ones, that only stick
out on one side of the mast, as depicted in that video. IE: you have both
feet and hands on the same super long
pegs. If you read through all the various industry- tower safety related
items, several showed sheared off step pegs.
They are usually just 5/8" x 10" long steel bolts, with mushroom end's on
em. That's fine..as long as you have the
requisite safety cableS running down the side of the mast/tower....and the
climber is clipped onto the safety cable at all
times. Then if he slips, he's not gonna fall too far. If you go through
that video a couple of times, you will see instances
of where the climber is only holding on with one hand! Now that's really
asking for trbl. Now add a little moisture, or a
sudden rain fall, some wind blowing you or the 30 lb tool bag swaying in the
breeze, or the fact the temp drops 3 deg's F
for every 1000' you climb up, and now you are really inviting trbl.
## what happens when the climber's hands go numb, or he has an accident,
and smacks his hand/arm/elbow into some
steel, and now has extreme difficulty climbing down? There appeared to
be rust in several places during the climb in that
video. I'd like to seem them do a guy wire change out.
later.... Jim VE7RF
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:52:15 -0800
From: jimlux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Shipping Companies
To: David Gilbert <xdavid@cis-broadband.com>
Cc: towertalk@contesting.com
Message-ID: <4CF8696F.5030001@earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
David Gilbert wrote:
> That is not a idle consideration.
> the right hand lane of a major highway ... three lanes in each direction
> with a median between them. Suddenly the trailer started to violently
> oscillate side to side, increasing in sideways travel with each swing.
>
maybe w4ef will tell about his experience with the W6UE tower trailer
coming back from field day??
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:21:58 -0500
From: "Roger (K8RI)" <K8RI-on-TowerTalk@tm.net>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Shipping Companies
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Message-ID: <4CF87066.9010708@tm.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 12/2/2010 5:55 PM, K7LXC@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 12/2/2010 12:01:13 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
> towertalk-request@contesting.com writes:
>
>> I am in the process of purchasing the HDX589MDPL from K0FF. I will be
> picking it up in MO in March. I was wondering what the best method of
> transportation would be to get it from Missouri to California. Ray, N6RV,
> mentioned I should ask here to see if there is a reasonable shipping
> company. Skip, KJ6Y, said I could use a large U Haul flatbed. I figure
> about
> two days travel.
>
>
> Hauling it yourself can pencil out. Several years ago I moved the
same
> type tower from San Jose, CA, to the Seattle area. A trucking company
> quoted me about $2k - I rented a flatbed truck and did it for about 1/2
that.
>
> There's a reason why UST uses a trucking company that picks it up at
> the factory and delivers it directly to the customer - too much handling
and
> damage otherwise. If you consign it to a shipping company, there's that
> damage potential.
>
> The trick is that you need handling on both ends - I think the
danged
> things weighs about 2000 lbs. (it might be 3000# - it was a bunch of
years
> ago) - so you'll need a backhoe, wrecker, crane or something similar.
> Driving it's easy - it's the loading and unloading that's the crux.
Here?
I can rig something for unloading, (I have a lot of steel, a couple of
4000# engine hoists, and two 4 ton cable hoists) but getting something
heavy across the yard and around behind the shop is a real challenge.
It'd take one of those fork lifts with the large pneumatic tires. I'd
have to do it in the winter when the ground is frozen and wait till
spring to install.
One of the old farm wagon frames would be ideal for that and might even
work in the summer, but certainly not in the spring.
It took two years to get rid of all the ruts the last time I had a truck
(Hy-Ranger) out there, but I'd sure like to replace that 25G with a good
crank up without spending a fortune.
73
Roger (K8RI)
> Cheers& GL,
> Steve K7LXC
> TOWER TECH
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> TowerTalk mailing list
> TowerTalk@contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
>
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:43:00 -0500
From: Jon Pearl - W4ABC <jonpearl@tampabay.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Shipping Companies
To: "Roger (K8RI)" <K8RI-on-TowerTalk@tm.net>
Cc: towertalk@contesting.com
Message-ID: <4CF87554.2060209@tampabay.rr.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hi Roger.
I've managed to move a couple of large crank-up towers by following the
Egyptians example. I've used large diameter PVC pipe in 3' or 4'
lengths as rollers to simply roll the tower around the property. When
one of the pieces of pipe pops out from behind the tower it is picked up
and thrown down in front of the tower in the path of travel. You can
easily slide the tower laterally on the slippery PVC by butting pipe
pieces end to end to make turns as you go.
You'll shove the biggest tower pieces around your property with little
effort and no ruts.
Tower: --------
Roller: |
---|---------|----------|----------|---->
You get the idea!
73,
Jon Pearl - W4ABC
http://w4abc.com
> Here?
> I can rig something for unloading, (I have a lot of steel, a couple of
> 4000# engine hoists, and two 4 ton cable hoists) but getting something
> heavy across the yard and around behind the shop is a real challenge.
> It'd take one of those fork lifts with the large pneumatic tires. I'd
> have to do it in the winter when the ground is frozen and wait till
> spring to install.
> One of the old farm wagon frames would be ideal for that and might even
> work in the summer, but certainly not in the spring.
>
> It took two years to get rid of all the ruts the last time I had a truck
> (Hy-Ranger) out there, but I'd sure like to replace that 25G with a good
> crank up without spending a fortune.
>
>
> 73
>
> Roger (K8RI)
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 20:52:06 -0800
From: "Rick Karlquist" <richard@karlquist.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Breaking all the tower climbing rules at an
To: "Jim Thomson" <jim.thom@telus.net>
Cc: towertalk@contesting.com
Message-ID:
<b346c06a2aecf9774997b5c8eec6e1a2.squirrel@webmail.sonic.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
Question for you experts: if it is forbidden to free climb
a tower, why is it OK to free climb a ladder? Not trying
to argue, just curious. I never climb towers, but often
climb ladders. I keep asking myself why I should feel
so safe on a ladder. (It is somewhat easier to fall
off a tower, admittedly).
Rick N6RK
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 00:09:42 -0500
From: "Robert West" <robert.west@eatmoresoap.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Breaking all the tower climbing rules at an
To: <richard@karlquist.com>, "'Jim Thomson'" <jim.thom@telus.net>
Cc: towertalk@contesting.com
Message-ID: <002c01cb92a8$4b8130f0$e28392d0$@eatmoresoap.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I've never climbed a 300 foot fiberglass ladder.
Seriously, how tall of a ladder are you climbing?
The higher you go, the more certain your death. I've been on a 30 foot
ladder and it sucked, didn't feel right whatsoever and I finished that
activity right then.
I'll take a 300 foot tower with a steel ladder, safety harness and hooks
over that 30 foot aluminum ladder any day of the week!
-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces@contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Rick Karlquist
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 11:52 PM
To: Jim Thomson
Cc: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Breaking all the tower climbing rules at an
Question for you experts: if it is forbidden to free climb a tower, why is
it OK to free climb a ladder? Not trying to argue, just curious. I never
climb towers, but often climb ladders. I keep asking myself why I should
feel so safe on a ladder. (It is somewhat easier to fall off a tower,
admittedly).
Rick N6RK
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End of TowerTalk Digest, Vol 96, Issue 10
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