Brian,
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, the tower is a three section beast, an Ez-Way
model RBZ-75 to be exact, but it does not use the 'wonder pole' base. Ez-Way
had two base choices for this tower, one being a 10 ft section of lattice tower
anchored in concrete with the tilt hinge on top. The other was a 10 ft steel
pole (hinge on top) mounted by anchor bolts to concrete along with a knee brace
structure around the pole also anchored to the concrete foundation.
My RBZ-75 is galvanized and in surprisingly good shape. I got it from a local
who retired and left the area. He got it off an embassy roof in DC (he was a
professional rigger/steel worker). He had it up at his QTH for years as a guyed
tower. Survived numerous tropical storms and brushes by hurricanes off the
coast.
Right or wrong, EZ-Way did advertise the option to guy this tower. It has guy
cable lugs on both the bottom and middle sections. Both the bottom and mid
sections have that 'flipper plate' you mentioned, designed to take vertical
forces off the raising cable. These plates and hinges are pretty beefy. I
suspect the tower rod bracing (and welds) on which they rest would be the
weakest link.
Nevertheless, I'm not thrilled with reacting the guy line forces through these
flipper plates. IF I do move forward with this tower, I'll probably use it in
it's original self-supporting design with a set of guys on the bottom section
only to provide some redundancy. Also, I have no plans to raise it to its full
75 ft height.
Shawn - N3AE
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