[TowerTalk] phillystran vs lightning

[n4kg@juno.com]

Have you considered the fiberglass guy material that W3LPL
and others use for their big towers?  I would have to check
my archives to find the supplier's name / address.

To prevent interactions with stacked antennas, you need to
break up the guys every 3/8 WL at the highest frequency
(every 12 ft for 10M) out to about 1WL, above and below
the sidemounted beams.  The first insulator needs to
be placed as close as possible to the tower because
of continuity through the guy through the tower and 
back to the other guys.

Phillystran and fiberglass begin to look real attractive
for tall towers!

73 / GL,  Tom  N4KG

On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 14:29:42 -0500 w8zh@juno.com writes:
> 
> 
> the guys on our 150ft tower are not broken with insulators. as part 
> of
> the stacked tribander project we are planning to break the guys with
> insulators or replace the top 40 ft of each guy with phillystran. 
> our
> tower is probably struck by lightning , due to our hilltop location, 
> 3 or
> 4 times a year.. the tower has an 8ft rod on each leg  connected 
> with 2/0
> copper and a rod on each guy anchor as shown in the rohn catalogs. i
> guess my question is has anyone heard of damage to phillystran after 
> a
> lightning strike.. i spoke with them last week and they were 
> noncommital
> at best. i am kind of leaning toward the insulators, which will just
> flash over.  the phillystran would get  all of the metal out of the 
> way
> of the antennas. anyone have any thoughts on this.  incidently fwiw, 
> the
> only damage we have had has been to rotors and we cured this by
> connecting the rotating mast to the tower so the path is not thru 
> the
> rotor.  we use a heavy braid negative battery cable from a farm 
> tractor
> and clamp 1 end to the rotating mast and the other end is bolted to 
> one
> of the tower legs.  this has also seemed to reduce precip 
> noise.....w8zh
> 
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