I believe the 1200 pound old style Phillystran was used for the truss guys on
the KLM antennas. However, they did not use guy grips or cable clamps...just
a thimble and a cube about one inch square of a plastic-like material which
might have been Lexan. The cube had five holes in which the Philly was woven
back and forth on itself. This system works quite well for this application
and I have never had a Phillystran failure on the trusses.
I have used the 1200 pound Philly for a different purpose and have used four
cable clamps and a thimble for it. The Philly is run between my towers and
supports a variety of various loops for eighty meters. At first when I
tightened the clamps it seemed like it was going to squash the cable to
nothing, so I loosened them up a bit and have been happy with the results.
They have held up well with no failures for four years.
I would have used the cubes from KLM but they were out of business by that
time. I did manufacture some when I had some extra potting compound left
over from some of the resin ends. I put some of the resin into an old ice
cube tray and wound up with half a dozen cubes. When I get the time I'll
drill holes in them to see if they can be used as the KLM lock cubes were.
By the way, the Philly used in all the applications above was the old style
skinny Philly.
Bill K4XS
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