Tower Loading

[Fred Hopengarten]

From:
Fred Hopengarten, K1VR
Six Willarch Road * Lincoln, MA 01773-5105 * 617/259-0088
e-mail:  k1vr@juno.com or k1vr@k1vr.jjm.com
Big antennas, high in the sky, are better than small ones, low.


On Fri, 07 Feb 1997 16:27:26 -0800 Bryan Sparrowhawk
<SPARHAWK@avtcorp.com> writes:
>So... what i want to hear are the stories of tower failures.  Not bent
>masts and crinkled yagi elements... but the real juicy ones

K1VR:  We had one New Hampshire ham lose 165' of Rohn 25 with nothing but
a 20 meter beam on top.  He had used screw in anchors and after weeks of
heavy fall rains, the earth turned to soup and one pulled out.

We had another New Hampshire ham lose a tower when trees fell on the guy
wires.

As I recall, a perusal of the Rohn 25 footnotes will show that the
engineering drawings are done at a safety ratio of 3:1.  I believe that
most commercial buildings never exceed a safety ratio of 1.5:1.  That's
why there are so many "overloaded" Rohn 25 systems which have never
failed.

Nonetheless, if I had to do it again, I'd buy Rohn 45.

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