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[TowerTalk] roof tower

To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] roof tower
From: n4zr@contesting.com (Pete Smith)
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:50:20
At 03:38 PM 3/11/98 -0500, bob wrote:
>I currently have 30 feet of rohn 25 mounted on my roof . There is a 16
>foot mast on top
>of that . Currently there is a mosley ta-53 and a klm 13 ele 2 meter
>beam on the mast .
>The tower is guyed at 15 feet and 30 feet to all four corners of the
>roof . The base is attached to L-iron about 1/2 inch thick .The L-iron
>is attached by 2 lag bolts on each
>to the roof rafters . It has been up for about 10 years and through a
>number of hurricanes since I live on the east coast on Long Island about
>two miles off the water.
>It has never flinched , not once and my neighbors watch it. Just my
>experience .


The base isn't the issue.  Once, years ago, I belonged to a club (name
omitted to protect the guilty) that had a Classic-36 on 20 feet of Rohn 25
on top of a 9-story office building.  The base of the tower wasn't attached
to anything in the vertical plane, and was only positioned horizontally by
guy wires running out to the points where the regular guys were attached.
This was done because the building owner didn't want us to pierce the roof.  

This installation, too, lived for a number of years, till a microburst came
along and blew the whole works over the side of the building one day.  The
failure occurred at one of the guy anchors, but fortunately the other guys
held it from falling all the way to the ground.

You don't describe your guy anchors, but unless they are a LOT stouter than
the way the tower base is fixed, I'd say you and your neighbors have been
very lucky indeed.  As they say on the TV ads, "don't try this at home."

73, Pete Smith N4ZR
n4zr@contesting.com 

"That's WEST Virginia.  Thanks and 73"

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