[TowerTalk] Trylon Titan questions

[Ryan Niemi - AV]

Hi everyone,

I've been considering a Trylon T-500 56' tower for a mountain-top repeater
site where my lease is a bit too small for a guyed tower.  I do have a few
questions though that I've noticed haven't come up much in the past Trylon
discussions:

 - Antenna mounting - Obviously most HAM's use a rotator and mast for big
   beams, but does anyone have any thoughts on side-mounting VHF whips and
   similar antennas?  This was easy on Rohn towers, just grab a few pieces
   of angle iron and some U-bolts and you have a side-mount, but this is a
   bit more complicated with the angle-steel legs and the tapered shape of
   the tower.  Anyone have any thoughts here?

 - Attaching coax - On Rohn towers I've just tie-wrapped coax to the legs.
   But with the shape of the Trylon legs, this wouldn't seem to be as
   affective unless you run the coax up the outside of the leg or have
   really big coax bundles that fit on the inside of the leg.  Do people
   run them up the center of a face, or is there an easier way to run
   coax up the inside of the tower?

 - Climbing - Okay, this one has come up a little bit in the discussions.
   Does anyone have any comment on climbing the upper sections?  Looking
   at the section drawings, I see the cross-braces on the small upper
   sections of the Titan towers have a really steep slant.  Is this quite
   difficult to climb?  I've also seen reference in one message that there
   are extra holes in the Titan legs that look like they may be for
   horizontal steps.  I ran across a picture of one Ham's Trylon tower
   that seems to have some horizontal steps installed:

http://webhome.idirect.com/~ve3kh/6_frame1.jpg

   The top half of the portion of the tower visible in this picture seems
   to have something like this.  Does Trylon sell step kits or is this
   likely something this tower owner fabricated out of some angle iron?

 - Lifting - When lifting with a crane from the top end, are these
   towers beefy enough to not risk failure or bending in the middle of
   the tower while tipping it up to vertical?

 - Rock bolts - I've noticed Trylon has rock bolts available.  Has anyone
   used these?  My site is on solid bedrock, and the option I've been
   considering so far has been to arrange for a hole to be blasted in
   the rock, or spend a lot of time with a jackhammer (it's soft enough
   to chip off with a shovel, kinda like a dense pummice/sandstone mix).

 - General dislikes - Does anyone not like their Trylon Titan tower?

Anyway, would love to hear any comments on the above questions!

Thanks,
 -Ryan - KD7GVG


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