Hi, everybody,
John, you asked for the war stories, and I have one which, although
not an amps tale, I think ranks at least in the top 100 scary ones.
Several years ago, an elderly ham contacted us electronics teachers at
a poor, private high school in Southern California. He wanted to
donate his entire antenna system to our ham club. We showed up on
Saturday morning in a U-Haul, giggling like little girls when we got a
load of his 100-foot tower and gigantic multielement array sitting
atop it.
Merrily, we headed for the backyard. With one person manning each of
the guy points on the ground, two guys on the roof carefully climbed
the (crank up) tower to remove the metal jambs and generally free up
the sticky sections.
Once that was done, our generous friend attached the manual crank to
the winch and began lowering the huge monstrosity, inch by inch, to
the lucky recipients, wagging their tails and panting impatiently to
dismantle the prize.
All of a sudden, something went very wrong. I remember getting the
most sickening feeling in my stomach. The winch was spinning wildly,
the antenna was coming down way too quickly and -- what are those
power lines doing? Oh no, did the two guys on the roof get clear of
the tower? It's falling, falling...
There I was, holding a metal guy wire, cowering under a shower of
sparks, confusion, the "blam! blam! blam!" of the crashing tower
sections, the blinding flashes of light. Live wires falling all around
me. I am very lucky to be alive. We are all lucky someone wasn't
killed.
I still get chills thinking about that day.
The handle had slipped off the crank and out of the OM's hand. With
nothing to stop it, the tremendous weight of the tower sections went
into free fall, all the way to the ground, and the tips of the 20
meter elements contacted the power lines on the way down, burning off
in the process and severing a 12 kV power line which landed a few feet
from me. Can you believe this? To this day, I hate crank up towers and
distrust them.
There were so many things that we did wrong that day, and so many
opportunities for us to have been harmed, but our guardian angels
would have none of it. Still, what a way to learn a lesson.
While you're practicing safe homebrewing on your amps, guys, don't
forget to carry that same mentality of total safety when you're out on
the antenna farm.
R,
Al
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