Didn't somebody just ask recently whether the loss of one guy would be
fatal to a tower? Here's a convincing bit of evidence (if you can
believe the article) ...
Dave AB7E
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A well constructed tower can easily stand up to having one guy wire
released. In fact the guy wire can be snapped and still be left standing.
One of my 200 foot Rohn 55's guy wires were caught by a front end loader
about five years ago. Before I could tell him to stop he snapped one of the
guy
wires at the 40 foot level. I ran like hell, but over my shoulder I could
see the tower wiggling and the two 40 meter Yagis really shaking after the guy
wire snapped. After I checked my skivies I went back to the tower hooked up
a new guy wire to replace the old one.
When the tower was disassembled last summer I checked out the sections and
all appeared to be fine...no bends, kinks etc in the sections. It looked so
good I hauled it out to KH6.
The bottom line is, most TV/AM towers are not inherently self supporting.
They come to a point at the bottom which means they HAVE to be guyed. Drop
the right guy or two and down they go.
A good source for info on this sort of stuff is the reflector called tower
pro on Yahoo. Most of the guys on the site are getterdone professional tower
guys and if you can get past all the bitching and misspellings it can be
pretty informative (at times).
Bill K4XS/KH7XS
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