Hello all,
Thanks for the many posts on my situation. Just visually
looking at the tower, I cannot see any specific area in
which there is any damage; if I sight up the tower, I can
see it curving slightly.
I was the one who did the original installation for the
ham from whom I purchased the house. The tower was
a 100' Rohn 55G tower (4' in the concrete base) with
the tower guy wires being out 80' from the base. Each
guy anchor was 3' square and dug to a depth of 4' -
each anchor had a re-bar assembly in it per the Rohn
catalog and the guy anchors were the Rohn p/n GAC34
anchor rods, made from 3/4" dia. steel rod with angle
iron welded to the bottom.
Each guy anchor was poured to approximately 15" con-
crete thickness and the dirt that was put back into the hole
was done in "steps," with the layers of dirt being tamped
in with a heavy tool.
After I had purchased the QTH, I put up 7 sections of
55G on top of the section coming out of the concrete
base, making the tower about 76' high. As I mentioned
before, I used Rohn 1/4" EHS guy wire with Big Grips
and end sleeves.
I did not have the turnbuckles safety-wired but I do know
that none of them had loosened up since I installed them;
after I had tensioned the guy wires, I put pieces of brown
vinyl color-coding tape next to the turnbuckle body. After
the storm, I inspected all of the turnbuckles and the taped
parts were still right next to the body of the turnbuckle.
I also tried inspecting the Big Grips and from what I could
see from the ground, none of them had slipped at all. So
I'm guessing that the (south-west) guy wires stretched. As
I also mentioned before, I'm going to replace the top set
of guy wires with 5/16" EHS material. I'm also going to
replace the galvanized, forged 1/2-13 x 12" eye & jaw
turnbuckles with 5/8"-11 x 12" galvanized, forged turn-
buckles.
In place of Big Grips with end sleeves, I am going to use
Crosby Clips, which are forged wire rope clips and I
will use 2 per connection. I am also going to serve each
of the 7 strands of guy wire material around the guy wire,
per the Rohn catalog instructions. Serving each of the 7
strands is somewhat time-consuming but I have done it
in the past and it is not all that difficult to do.
73 de Brad, N9EN @ Radio Free Roscoe (IL) [tm]
_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather
Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
|