Bill W5VX wrote:
> One thing that I
didn't see or missed was something to put on the guy wires to protect me
from hanging myself while mowing the yard. I noticed that the electric
company (Magic Valley Electric Company) had put long plastic tubes around
their back guys on their poles. I called them and asked if I could buy three
to put on my 3 bottom guys for my 120 foot Rohn tower. They said that they
didn't sell them but gave me the suppliers phone number in San Antonio. I
called them and the fellow I talked to was a ham and said he was coming down
this way and would bring me 3 if I would give him lunch. He brought them to
the house and for the price of my wife making him a ham sandwich!
> Those things have saved my old bald head many times. If you have bare guy
wires you might think about putting them on...very easy. Mine are
fluorescent yellow, about 1" in diameter and about 8 feet long. I don't
think the price was outlandish. I bet they are available lots of places.
> They just snap on your guy wires.
I used some of those after I put up my 127' tower back in 1981 for the same
reason. A local farmer leases the crop land here and keeps the place mowed
off. I wanted to make sure whoever he hired to do the mowing would clearly see
the guy wires and not take down the tower with his tractor. The local power
company sold me mine for a few bucks each.
But I had one problem with them. UV from the sun eventually destroys them.
After a couple of years, the fluorescent yellow turned into a dingy
greyish-white. The plastic finally deteriorated to the point that I could break
pieces off pieces of the plastic and it would crumble in my hand. I also notice
the yellow on ones the power company uses on utility poles fading in exactly
the same manner, and I have seen remaining pieces of ones that have fallen
apart still hanging onto sections of the guys.
I finally replaced mine with 1/2" white PVC pipe. I sawed a slit lengthways
along the edge of the pipe, just wide enough to allow them to slip over the
guy cable, then using PVC glue, then glued a couple of scrap pieces of the
next size larger PVC pipe to close the slit at each end, to hold them in place.
Those have now been in place for at least 15 years and the plastic is still
pretty much intact.
Don k4kyv
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