A little late comment Steve, but you make a very good point. My HG-70HD came
with the motor control option but I never bothered to install it. And, glad I
did not. Last spring, after all the winter winds, I decided to hand crank it
back up to full height (it was at 2/3). Did NOT notice that a section of the
top drooping cable had evidently been blown hard enough to hang up over the top
coax arm. Noticed the cranking was suddenly a little hard, looked up and my
coax arm was bent down at almost 45 degrees. Necessitated cranking it back down
all the way, climbing up and replacing the coax arm. Hate to think what might
have happened if I'd had the motor attached and raised it from inside the
shack. Lesson learned - always do a close inspection of the tower if its been
cranked down awhile.
Don W7WLL
----- Original Message -----
From: K7LXC@aol.com
To: towertalk@contesting.com ; w7wll@arrl.net
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: TowerTalk Digest, Vol 89, Issue 8
In a message dated 5/3/2010 12:01:23 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
towertalk-request@contesting.com writes:
> As to tower cables failing, in my 54 years of hamming, I have never
heard
first hand from anyone that has had cable failure although I am sure this
has occurred, certainly there are enough stories floating around. I have to
imagine that the majority of cases was because of poor maintenance
procedures, pushing a reasonable replacement time limit, or undersized or
poor quality cable or improper eye swaging.
Actually the 2 I've seen were none of the above. Both cable failures
were due to another external cable (coax, etc.) snagging on something on the
way up and unnoticed by the owner as the tower was moving. BIG noise as the
main haul cable snapped and everything collapsed into the tower bending antenna
booms and creating a bit of a problem repair-wise.
This is why I discourage using any kind of remote tower control and
strongly recommend you be at the tower watching everything whenever it's
moving.
Cheers,
Steve K7LXC
TOWER TECH
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