Greetings, TowerTalkians --
As most of you know, I do professional tower work. One thing I learned
from my days of commercial work with crews and trucks on the road is that if
you've got a job with 3 riggers, they'll come up with 3 different ways of
doing it. Is one better than another? Probably not.
The difference between professional riggers and hams is that hams
typically have to conjure up a solution to most tower construction problems;
i.e. how do you pull a guy wire tight, how do you get a big mast installed,
how do you get a tower section to fit another one, etc.
My observation is that amateurs tend to make something more complicated
than it really is. I am a BIG fan of carabiners and nylon slings for just
about everything. Carabiners are aluminum snap links with spring-loaded gates
and can be put on most anything with one hand in about half-a-second and
they're pretty strong. They are vastly superior to a shackle/clevis where you
have two pieces where one may accidentally be dropped, it takes two hands to
install one, and it takes some time to install.
Nylon loop slings can be used to attach just about any irregularly shaped
piece that doesn't have a convenient carabiner attachment point - slinging a
boom for lifting, putting a choker on a mast, lifting tower sections
vertically, etc. Why use a U-bolt that has four pieces and takes effort,
tools and time to put on when you can sling something in a couple of seconds?
For example, I use a nlyon sling choked around the mast on the top of the
tower for the attachment point for the tramline and haul line when tramming
antennas up and down. The latest scheme I saw was a piece of angle iron with
TWO U-bolts to the mast and another hanging down for the tram/rope attachment
point - a nine-piece device - yikes. It must've taken ten-fifteen minutes to
install this device - a sling is about 30 seconds.
Then you have to attach the tramline so there was a medium-sized snap
link to do that. Then the tramline had about a six-inch termination on it.
What's wrong with this picture? The Second LXC Law of Tower and Antenna
Construction is that: "No matter how you rig something, by the time it gets
up to the top of the tower you're always an inch or two short of where you
need to be". In this case when the haul line locked in the pulley, the
antenna was still about a FOOT away from the mast. Ye gads - what do you do
NOW?!? You need to make everything as compact and short as possible; i.e. use
a bowline knot because it's pretty small, attach the tramline and haul line
pulley as close to the mast as you can, use a minimum of hardware, etc.
I'm getting more upset with antenna manufacturers that still use U-bolts
with saddles for mast attachment. You ever wrestle a 40M beam that was
hanging off-balance and you had to align the U-bolt with the boom-to-mast
plate in a wind? What a pain in the ass. The F12 plate is MUCH better as is
the Bencher. Manufacturers - use a little time and imagination to IMPROVE
this important fixture.
These same manufacturers haven't woken up either to the fact that
elements SHOULD NOT be mounted on TOP of the boom! What a stupid idea - now
it's TOP-HEAVY. You ever have a KLM or M2 or Mosley antenna turn turtle (go
upside-down) on you while you were trying to take it down or put it up?!? A
pox on these antenna manufacturers.
Make it simple and make it safe and you'll save yourself hours of
frustration and an endless stream of colorful colloquialisms.
BTW carabiners and slings are available from <A
HREF="http://www.championradio.com";>www.championradio.com</A>.
Cheers,
Steve K7LXC
TOWER TECH --
Professional tower services for commercial and amateur
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