[Towertalk] Double protection - climbing

[Chuck Lewis]

TowerTalkers,

Here's A similar 'Gotcha'. Fortunately I caught IT before it got ME:

I was recently replacing the large vertical on our local DX cluster node
antenna (110'), and doing a little maintenance on some other stuff while I
was up there. I use a fall arrest harness with both positioning and fall
arrest lanyards. The fall arrest lanyard is the 'extendible' type, which has
about five feet of stretch before snugging up. One end attaches to the chest
D ring, and one end to the tower. It was brand new and I was enjoying the
feeling of added security as I climbed past the guy attach points (reach up,
attach FAR, disconnect positioning lanyard, swing it around tower above
guys, reattach to waist ring, climb six feet, reach down, grab FAR hook,
reposition on tower overhead and continue, always having one lanyard between
me and the tower). This was working great, but eventually, because of a
snagged halyard, I wound up oscillating up and down a couple times, always
around a guy attachment. But worse, when climbing down, I kept forgetting to
release the upper FAR hook until it snugged up (out-of-reach of course,
being extendible) and I had to climb back up a few feet to reach it. Anyway,
after a series of these irritating dumb*ss reversed direction episodes, I
looked down at the FAR attached to the tower and looked up at the FAR also
ATTACHED TO THE TOWER! The tower was really safe, but MY safety redundancy
was zero! Clearly, I had grabbed the hook from the chest D ring and firmly
planted it on the tower at my feet prior to one of the downward
oscillations. Yes, it was a long climbing session; yes, I was TIRED; yes, I
was COMPLACENT with the added security; yes, I was IRRITATED at myself for
mental errors; yes, there were dark clouds moving in and I was in a HURRY.
Tired, Complacent, Irritated, and Hurried. All the ingredients for a bad
day.

This led to a suggestion by one of the ground crew to simply tape one of the
FAR hooks around its gate to prevent (or at least as a reminder) removal
from the chest D ring. I will do that from now on. But the real message here
has more to do with the "tired, complacent, hurried, irritated (y'all can
add a few others of your own)" components of the equation. Student pilots
get this message
fed to them over and over, along with the notion that disasters are seldom
the result of single events...but from a series of mistakes by which we dig
ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole. We can learn a lot from that
philosophy.

Chuck, N4NM
(still here to tell this tale, and trying to start an "I learned about
climbing from this:" thread)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Beckwith" <mark@concertart.com>
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 9:15 AM
Subject: [Towertalk] Double protection - climbing


> > You'll be safer if
> > you have some sort of lanyard (i.e. the fall arrest lanyard on your fall
> > arrest harness) that you can attach above you and then you can climb up
to
> it
> > safely since you'll be attached to the tower 100% of the time you're
> trying
> > to get around your appurtenances. (You do have a FAH, don't you?)
>
> In my older years as I have used up more and more of my 9 lives, I kid you
> not, EVERY time I cross from below the guys to above the guys, (or a
yagi),
> I am really thankful I adopted a "double protection" practice at my new
> station.
>
> When I was young and foolish, I would take the gamble every time.  I try
to
> avoid that nowadays.
>
> On a related subject, which all day Friday as I put up 10M beams, I was
> thinking I should share with the world:
>
> I had the good fortune to visit with a retired professional climber in
1994
> as I was putting up large DX Engineering yagis out at N6VI/KH6 (now KH7R)
> for a contest we were getting ready for.  He was an older guy who quit his
> career after a fall, who, seriously, was touristing out there, spotted us
at
> work, and stopped by to see what we were doing (can't get it out of your
> blood, I guess).
>
> We talked for a while.  ALWAYS one to try and learn from other peoples'
> mistakes, here was his mistake, which I think of EVERY TIME I cross past
> guys or booms:  As we all know, on a tower, you have to disconnect and
> reconnect your main lanyard time after time after time.  This fellow was
in
> a hurry, and when he re-attached, it was mistakenly to the shank of a
large
> tool, and not the big belt ring as he thought.  He leaned back and they
were
> calling the ambulance.
>
> We should all be glad he lived to tell this story.  Anyway, whenever I
> reattach, before I unattach the above mentioned double protection, I
> visually inspect my main lanyard to assure it is attached to my belt on
both
> ends.
>
> Thank God I got smarter as I got older.
>
> Have a good holiday everyone, I'm off to help a friend with a 4-square
which
> I will activate in the Stew.  See you on the air.
>
> Mark, N5OT
>
>
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