[TowerTalk] polyrod

[RICHARD BOYD]

Who knows.  It's possible the ones we got (more than one shipment, as I recall) were defective.  It could be ours were the typical and what you have is the "supreme" version.  Your experience is another empirical data point and if you're having a good experience with a coiled-up bunch, that's super and a very positive datapoint.

As for shipping a sample back, I personally did not ship any back, but I know we did, as a group, discuss it with them pretty exhaustively, resulting in them sending out a complete shipment to replace everything that had broken, which was a lot of thousands of feet of their product that they replaced at no cost to the customer.  It's hard for me to imagine that someone in a position of authority at the company didn't know about it and authorize the replacement shipment, and hard to imagine that every engineer on their staff was not thoroughly aware of it, at the time.  For them to all forget about it or not ever have been told about it is a little surprising, but theoretically possible.

Suffice to say, this is not a "rumor."  It is a fact.  But, at the time, the company was very good at replacing it, so I have no complaint.  We all learned something about their product that they apparently didn't know -- at the time.  What we, the customers, don't know is if this problem has ever occurred again, after that collective experience some years back, or if it was caused by a defective production run back then, or some variable in rolling up and shipping that caused it then but has since changed so that it doesn't happen now.

I would say that anyone who buys some in the present should ask for specific instructions as to how it should be stored and handled, follow the company's instructions to the letter, and if the product does not perform to company spec, deal with it as you would any other product that isn't up to spec.  If it does perform as specified, you should have no complaint.  When I'm ready to buy some more, this is what I will do, and I will not ask them about any "rumors" and I will not bring up the factual experience that many of us had, as a group, all those years ago.  I know what happened then and I don't need to bring it up and put them in an embarrassing position over it and causing their personnel, who I hope to have a good working relationship with, to either (let's say) "tell untruths," or to not remember things that they, as company, maybe should remember -- it's just not necessary.

Just follow their instructions to the letter, document it if possible, and if everything works fine, great.  If not, do what needs to be done.  73 - KE3Q
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tom Rauch<mailto:w8ji at contesting.com> 
  To: RICHARD BOYD<mailto:ke3q at msn.com> ; towertalk at contesting.com<mailto:towertalk at contesting.com> ; Ken Claerbout<mailto:K4ZW at Staffnet.com> 
  Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 8:48 PM
  Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] polyrod



  > Yeah, well I absolutely do not and will not get involved
  in any sort of argument about this, but for anyone at
  Polygon to say they've never heard of such a thing just
  shows ignorance on their part.  What causes it may be open
  for debate, but to not have heard of it...just stupid.

  Well, it certainly could ** and most important SHOULD be
  resolved ** in no time at all if someone just shipped a
  sample of a defective piece back.

  If Polygon doesn't know, doesn't understand, or doesn't
  think there is a problem and there is one this absolutely
  DOES need corrected ASAP.

  In the mean time since I know the history of the rod I have,
  since Polygon says it is perfectly OK, and since I've never
  seen any other fiberglass product behave as described...mine
  is staying in coils (as it has for years as I slowly use
  it). One thing I do know is if I string thousands of feet of
  rod out it will be ruined for sure within a year!!

  (My own opinion is something is so drastically wrong with
  the rod it misbehaves while sitting in a coil, I don't want
  it holding up any big towers anyway. I'll take it to the
  landfill and buy something known to last.  The small savings
  per foot isn't worth the risk.)

  Before reaching any conclusion about Polygon's staff I'd
  send them a sample of some of this bad rod....unless it's
  like the $500 69' 427 Corvette sitting in the dead Nam vets
  mother's garage that was sold several years ago?   :)