[TowerTalk] Homebrew Towers & Liability

[Wes & Linda]

At 09:05 PM 12/13/00 EST, K7LXC@aol.com wrote:
[snip]

>    What're you...nuts? Towers on the market have been designed by proper 
>engineers and built by journeymen workers. You think you can do that? HA! 
>
>    A 'wooden' tower? Sheesh.
>
>Cheers,   Steve    K7LXC
>Tower Tech  

Let me see.... I seem to recall someone posting photos of the crappy welds
on freshly built Rohn tower sections that were being returned to Rohn for
replacement.

Were these the ones "built by journeymen workers" that you are referring to?

Let me run this by you.  I number among my close friends (all of us retired
from the same aerospace firm) a mechanical engineer with a Ph.D. from
Stanford who now teaches at the U of AZ and a metallurgist with a master's
degree. (Just to show you that the doctor isn't some fuzzy-headed theorist,
he also built his own house, drilled his own well and enters
tractor-pulling contests with his antique crawler that he personally
rebuilt.) My next-door neighbor once worked at the same firm as a certified
welder.   He now works for a glass-fiber drawing company welding such
things platinum dies, etc.  It doesn't hurt that he also owns a backhoe <g>.

If I determined a set of requirements and asked these folks to design and
construct a tower and footing for me is it your position that it's going to
be unsafe or fail?

As to wooden construction, just think about all of the 200+-year-old
timber-framed buildings, aircraft and blimp hangers, railroad bridges,
water towers and so forth that are still standing and operating.


Sheesh indeed.


Wes Stewart  N7WS


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