[TowerTalk] Guyed self-supporters (was "Concrete suggestions")

[W2fca at cs.com]

In a message dated 4/18/03 21:23:02 Eastern Daylight Time, 
olinger at bellsouth.net writes:
<< If you sight down them, you will see that they are not pulled
 "straight-line" taut. They have a certain "bow" to them. This is a
 function of the weight of the guy pulling down in the center against
 the design tension trying to pull it straight, and the gradual loss of
 leverage to lift the middle by pulling as the line becomes straighter. >>

Cool. I gotta look into this. It's been years since I did the kind of math 
needed to check the droop on a catenary but now I'm interested in this. I'll 
have to check out my guys tomorrow and play with some calculations.
That's assuming that I can remember them. But these days I have a better 
chance of recalling calculus from 1969 than I do of remembering my new work 
phone number from last week.

Frank
W2FCA