The aforementioned fire victim was me. The 20 foot steel ends on the guys were
of little help when the flames were 100 feet high. The tower was 80 feet, and
everything on the tower that wasn’t steel was vaporized. The ground temperature
around the tower was high enough to melt most of the spare aluminum stacked in
the area.
A 50 foot tower next to the house was saved, but the plastic shroud on the cell
repeater antenna at the top was melted.
Let’s just say this necessitated a complete station rebuild.
Ken K6MR
From: Wayne Kline
Sent: Sunday, 25 May, 2014 14:05
To: Chuck Smallhouse
Cc: towertalk@contesting.com
I am under the impression ,that Phillistran installation guid recommends
appropriate steel/EHS
Guy wire at a safe tamper proof and ground fire height.
I have installed a number of both Phillistran and PollyRod towers, guy /
ground safety hight
Plugged into the total guy equation .
Wayne. W3EA
Sent from my iPad
On May 24, 2014, at 11:56 PM, "Chuck Smallhouse" <w7cs@theriver.com> wrote:
> A story for those of you using Phillistran cable for guying a tower.
>
> I was talking to a ham that lives in far N. CA, in area that is subject to
> wildfires. A couple of years ago the area had a bad wildfire that moved in
> the direction of his QTH, in a somewhat rural area. Even though the area
> around his home was quite well cleared, they couldn't save his workshop where
> most of his test equipment and ham equipment was located.
>
> When he returned after a mandatory evacuation and surveyed the damage , he
> found that not only was his ham shack destroyed, but also his guyed tower had
> fallen over. It turned out that he had guyed it using Phillistrand and that
> the fire had burned the guys through and which resulted in the catastrophic
> demise of his tower and beams.
>
> I guess that the lesson to be learned is, to at least have the bottom
> sections of your guys be of steel cable and not any type of flammable
> material, especially if you live in a wildfire prone area.
>
> Chuck, W7CS, with no Phillistrand guys .
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
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