[TowerTalk] Old World Thinking-guying self supporting towers

[K3BU at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/17/03 8:29:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time, w0hh at msn.com 
writes:

> 
>  I cant even come close to imagining why someone would pay the price for a 
> perfectly good self-supporting tower, which has been designed by a real 
> engineer, and then .… it up with unsightly guy wires.

Imagine this:
You live in Florida, you have perfectly designed antenna/tower system rated 
for 90 mph winds. Normal situation. Then you hear that huricane is coming at 
210 mph. What will YOU do? Pray that it bypasses you? You have no prayer that 
this thing will survive, you will end up with pretzels. It happened in many 
places. Ever heard of NP4A (ex KP4AST) and his fantastic antenna farm? Or 
W7RM farm? Or W2HCW having Big Bertha snapped under 3 el. KLM 80m beam? Wiped 
out! If they had one guy with available anchor, they would be enjoying their 
antennas for a lot longer.

If you had guy cables (or at least one) attached at the top and just hanging 
down the tower with anchor points in directions of worst winds, and then 
hooking it up when storms is coming, it would make a difference between 
wipe-out and survival.

It is all question of loads and taking measures to secure in the worst case. 
Or for that case when you want to "slightly" overload the tower for contest 
weekend and want to have extra safety measures available.

Nobody is saying that you should put up self-supporting tower and then put 
guy wires to make it look ugly (but stronger). It all boils down to having 
extra safety if needed. I have seen commercial BC towers, self-supporting, 
tapered and with one set of guy wires. 

73 and stay safe!

Yuri, K3BU