I usually do not comment on things like this, however these are some of the
scariest tower pictures I have seen. Besides the lack of any real P.P.E. I
would be concerned about the integrity of the 200 foot towers. The tubing
is kinked where it is bent who knows what the yield strength is or the
condition the welds. http://w7yrv.blogspot.com/2013/10/roys-qth-w7yrv.html
The guy cable appears to be very small wire rope. In one picture it is
connected to the guy anchor with rubber bungee cords.
John KK9A
To:towertalk@contesting.com
Subject:Re: [TowerTalk] Raising Towers
From:Jim Lux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Date:Thu, 26 Dec 2013 17:03:06 -0800
List-post:<towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Yeah, I finally found that one..
I'm not so wild about climbing with just a belt. BUT.. if that's a piece of
kernmantle static line, which is kind of what it looks like, I don't think
that's the biggest of his problems. I'd worry more about one of the
innummerable welds popping loose when the hook pulls on it. And it kind of
looks like he's just looped it through the rings on his belt.
But hey, safety is relative. When I learned to rock climb in the 70s, the
"state of the art" was a swami belt of 20-25 ft of 1" webbing wrapped around
your waist. You tied on with either a figure 8 or a bowline (which is what
his hooks are tied on with). That was considered perfectly safe compared to
crazy guys who would just tie the rope around their waist, or even crazier
guys who just went rope free.
That this was a few short decades after the introduction of the "belay" and
anchoring the belayer to the wall, as opposed to the late 19th century
approach of tie everyone to the same rope, and move together, and "the
leader must not fall".
So 'YRV thinks that he's ok, and while he's doing stuff that *I* wouldn't
do, and neither would most people, it's not like he's climbing up that 200
ft tower with NO safety (which, in fact, people do..). He's at sort of the
1960s-1970s safety practice level.
Should people take his example as one to follow? Certainly not. Should we
tell him "don't climb, until you have a certified harness, and use standard
industry practice, and by the way, are you a certified welder?" I don't
think so. He clearly knows the consequences of failures (since he has the
mishaps page).
It's sort of like people setting off on a solo sailboat trip across an
ocean. Or jumping horses over fences. Or off-road racing. It's a
fundamentally unsafe thing to do. There are more or less safe ways you can
do it, but that doesn't change a lot of things. Everyone gets to make their
own decisions (hopefully with good advice, but free to ignore it).
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