VE7RF wrote:
The rules on setbacks upsets me. To have a tower fall full length and
still remain on your own property is pretty tough if a ham lived on a
typ city lot..like 50' x 120' or similar. Freestanding towers, like
Trylons are designed to break at the 40' level..and not at the
base.They will not fall full length. A UST crank up is the same
deal, they break 3 x sections up.
Now if a 100' tall tree on my own property, falls down on my neighbors'
house, the neighbors' own house insurance covers the damage. If the
neighbor does not have insurance, he is outa
luck. My insurance does NOT cover my neighbors' home. Same deal with my
tower.
--
this brings up a couple interesting issues..
You say designed to break at a particular point. I hadn't seen that in
any of the drawings I've seen, but then, I wouldn't think they would put
a dashed line and arrow in a bubble saying >Break here. But it is an
interesting concept.
The question would be whether it would fly in a regulatory context. It's
well known that tall skinny freestanding things tend to break somewhere
when falling (chimneys, pencil points), but I don't know that it's
something that can be convincingly "designed in" in a way that will
cover ALL circumstances. If the tower is strong enough, it WILL fall in
one intact piece. (e.g. 200-300 foot trees fall over without breaking
in the middle)
The tower vs tree thing is more about "manmade" vs "natural feature"..
and, I suspect that if you had a big tree with obvious defects in it and
it fell on someone else's stuff, you'd wind up with liability. All what
a "reasonable person" would have done to mitigate the obvious danger.
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