[TowerTalk] Guy wire Clamps

[Tom Rauch]

> HMMM.   My 130 ft R35 tower has the guy grips 
> placed around the legs and catches the corners
> of the Z braces.  Still there, even after a small
> tornado.  The top (1/4 inch) guys even held up 2 trees 
> that fell against them!  BUT, it may still not be optimum.
> 
> de  Tom  N4KG

This is a true story.

I took down a 100 foot Rohn 45 in Mississippi that was  guyed with 
screw anchors angled away from the tower. It had 3/16 inch 
preforms on some of the 1/4 inch guyline (wrapped as much as it 
would), and was guyed to random legs (not the leg closest to the 
anchors). Some of the guy lines had 1/2 inch saddle clamps, 
instead of the wrong grips. A few even had a correct clamp. 

The base plate had holes burned in it, and it was welded to what 
looked like a 20 or 25G  stub sticking out of concrete. The welds 
were all broken, and the tower had spun with only one leg and the 
ridge of weld holding the base.

It had a pro67 and a two meter antenna on top.

When I didn't want to climb the tower, the owner's friend said "hell, 
that things been up through a tornado".

Inside the house, the guy had a homebrew 3CX1200 amplifier with 
the transformer...an unpotted pole-pig... laying on the floor. The 
electrolytics were in a milk crate, and the lid of the PA was 
propped up with a cardboard box or a can or something. A regular 
desk-type fan was aimed down at the tube, sitting there. Probably 
over 5000 volts on that anode, and on the spark-plug wires from the 
transformer that was sitting on an old sheet of metal.

The owner of this mess was dead. He was a surgeon, and had just 
died of cancer. The rotor box was a mess from cigar smoke.

Absolutely true story in every detail!

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

What I learned:

You won't always have a failure even if you do a dozen things 
wrong, but there is no point in pushing your luck. Since guy grips 
plainly warn about putting them over something with a short radius, 
and since I've seen a case (but only one) where a grip broke, I just 
won't do it.

Now I don't mind using EHS grips on EHS cable, because the 
manufacturer assures me the line will fail before the grip. That is 
also my experience using guy line to pull my tractor out of the 
mud. But I'll be darned if I want a grip pulled against a small radius 
rod on my tower, any more than I want to use a backwards clamp 
that puts a small radius U-bolt against the EHS steel.

  
73, Tom W8JI
w8ji@contesting.com

--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/FAQ/towertalk
Submissions:              towertalk@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  towertalk-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-towertalk@contesting.com