Hi John,
The Caltech Radio Club inherited one of those once (eight 8' sections =
64'). We took it down just like that - with a hacksaw at every other joint.
We left it in double-sections (I think we even had the fused joints
heliarc'd just to make sure). Then we cleaned up the ends, welded new
custom bolt flanges at the ends, and to this day those four 16' towers are
part of the Field Day arsenal at W6UE. Each has a rotator plate and a top
plate. This tower could be bolted back together and permanently installed
as a 64' tower, but I'm not sure I'd climb it all the way to 64' if it were,
with those welded flanges. As 16' towers, we would put everything together
on the ground, tilt them up, then guy them with ropes for Field Day and also
for VHF contests.
Very handy for portable operations.
73 - Mark, N5OT
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Kemker" <john@kemker.org>
To: "Towertalk" <towertalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 7:44 PM
Subject: [TowerTalk] Used Towers
> Just before New Year's, I managed to obtain a used 72ft. Heights Tower
> that had been up for 37 years. Unfortunately, the only recoverable
> items were some of the antennas (a Mosley Pro-67A and some unidentified
> VHF/UHF antennas with square booms), a Yaesu G-1000 and an Ameritron
> RCS-8V. The Pro-67A will need some of the aluminum replaced, but the
> main boom and all of the traps are in excellent condition. The G-1000
> is in an unknown state, as I do not as of yet have the controller in
> hand, nor have I had a chance to hook it up to my current G-1000 SDX
> controller to verify its operation. The RCS-8V relay box appears to be
> in excellent condition, as far as the relays go. The SO-239s could use
> replacement, but a bit of time with a soldering iron and some junk-box
> connectors with teflon insulators (not to mention some of the
> replacements being female N connectors) and it should work out fine, if
> the controller is found. If not, I should be able to homebrew a decent
> replacement controller for next to nothing. A 12V power supply and a 5
> position switch and I should be good to go.
>
> The problem lies in the tower itself. Unfortunately, it appears that
> the tower had been hit by lightning at one point. The former owner, an
> SK, had not grounded the tower at the base. As a result, this 37-year
> old tower had the joints fused, the stainless hardware was all
> corroded(!) and fused and otherwise impossible to separate. As a
> result, the person I had hired to take down the tower ended up cutting
> the tower into 16ft. sections at every other joint. According to him,
> this is how he had been instructed in the past by professional tower
> companies to take down towers when the joints could not be separated.
>
> My question is this: Has anyone ever put up a tower that has been taken
> down in this manner and if so, what was done to the joints to make sure
> they were appropriately strong when putting it back up? If you only
> have comments of "Don't do it!" or similar, please save your breath and
> the bandwidth. Unless I see some pretty convincing messages on how to
> do it safely, I'll be purchasing a new tower later on this year instead
> of trying to reuse this beast. (In that case, I'll be taking the
> sections to a scrap yard for recycling and pocketing the money for
> spending on the new tower.)
>
> --
> --JohnK
> 73 de W5NNH
> 10X 75371/M&M 117/SMIRK 6185/Six Club 285/TRA 2499/Norcross 228 F&AM
>
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>
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