At 10:26 AM 7/11/2005, Kelly Johnson wrote:
>The "drilling rigs" mentioned as of late are all designed to dig a
>round hole, not a square one. Every tower foundation spec I've seen
>(USTower, Trylon, AN Wireless) specs a square hole. There are lots of
>building inspectors that won't accept a round hole when a square one
>is called out in the manufacturer specs.
>
>It would seem to me that these tower manufacturers need to realize
>that the specs they are creating can't be realized very easily by most
>amateurs.
Bringing up the interesting question of how big a market are amateurs. It
may well be that the tower company doesn't have much business reason to
change the design. In a kinder, gentler, less regulated era, it may be
that the plans were were more guidelines for amateur use, with the
expectation that the regulators would be working off the "intent" and not
requiring hard analysis.
If a tower company sells, say, 1000 towers a year, and 950 of them are to
commercial customers who will be hiring an engineer anyway, then the
remaining 50 sales may not justify creating a new design, especially for
use by "non-professionals".
There's all sorts of disincentives to publishing a new design in the
perceived liability area. Does the new design imply that the old design
was somehow defective? Maybe the old design wasn't great, but because it's
40 years old, nobody's complaining, and you've got a big installed base to
point to for empirical data.
_______________________________________________
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.
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