[TowerTalk] working alone (was "climbing safety")

[Mark Beckwith]

Rich said:

>And, I'm going to start heeding the advice to have a
>helper on site

> "There but for the grace of God go I."

Golly, I have been giving this some thought, too, for the past 24 hours.
Yesterday I was getting an antenna ready to go up for CQWW and had a stupid
mishap which resulted in a bash (with bleeding) to my chin.  I was on the
ground at the time, and I was working alone.  I was rigging to tram up a
full-sized 2-el 40 to work those hard-to-get places.  No fleshflaps and the
bleeding stopped quickly, so it was obviously superficial.  A little
peroxide and a bandaid and I was back at it.

Anyway, another 6-8 inches and it could have been my skull.

So now the antenna's up and the feedline's shorted, since what fell on my
chin landed on the coax pigtail and I didn't realize it until this morning
when I was doing the final smoketest.

Well, my wife is a little concerned that I work alone.  To me, I'm not about
to miss another CQWW just because the station's not ready.  Or whatever.
It's a risk I have been willing to take.  Maybe I should just refrain from
doing stupid things when nobody's around?

Mark, N5OT