Crank up towers do collapse on occasion. Last month I had dinner in Aruba
with P49MR and his tower cable broke twice in several years. I also know
first hand of others in Illinois that had their cable break when their
towers were fully extended. Everyone knows that you are not supposed to
climb crank-up towers. I owned a U.S. Tower 89' crank-up for a while and
the only way I could service the rotor was to crank it up partially. How
else are you supposed to get at the nested rotator? I raised it up and stuck
4X4's through the rungs and climbed the tower. I had a lot of rotor
problems back then (HyGain HDR-300) and although the tower never failed I
was afraid of working on it like this. Even when the tower was retracted to
the microswitch stop, it was never fully down making working on antennas
hazardous. I replaced that crank up tower with a Rohn 65 guyed tower.
73,
John
-----Original Message----
From: Bill Steffey
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Sent: 3/15/2002 12:34 AM
Subject: Re: [Towertalk] CRANK UP TOWERS - Not a panacea
<clip> I thought climbing up any crankup was a BIG NO NO.
Working at 22ft is just like working at the top of my 50" Universal.
Very dangerous, if you fall.
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