[TowerTalk] Will my roof stay on?

Jim Smith jimsmith at shaw.ca
Fri Aug 26 02:45:15 EDT 2005


2nd attempt to send this

Hi Dick,

See if you can find a copy of
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Physical Design of Yagi Antennas
-- by Dr. David B. Leeson, W6QHS.

Packed with information on how to design or reinforce Yagi antennas so 
they can survive in the most adverse weather conditions like 
120-mile-per-hour winds! Covers the structural design of elements, booms 
and masts, plus the electrical design of Yagi antennas.
340 pages. First edition, © 1992, The American Radio Relay League, Inc. 
(ISBN: 0-87259-381-9) #3819
This publication is out of print.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It will tell you all (and then some) you need to know about calculating 
forces due to winds and specifying masts.  There's also a lot of stuff 
about mechanical design of yagis that isn't really applicable to your 
situation, given that you aren't designing your own antennas.

There's a lot of algebra as he goes through the process of deriving the 
equations used in the calculations.  You can simply ignore this and just 
use the final resulting equations for your calculations.

The book refers to spreadsheets for doing various calculations.  These 
spreadsheets don't come with the book.  They are available at 
http://www.realhamradio.com/Download.htm

It doesn't say anything about how you keep a tower up or whether your 
roof will stay on.  It does enable you to calculate the forces which 
your guying system will have to deal with or, if guys aren't involved, 
the forces the tower will exert on the roof.

ARRL used to list the book at $20 but I bought a copy from HRO a couple 
of weeks ago for $15, so the book seems to still be available, probably 
not for long.

Another great tower resource is at http://www.qsl.net/n1lo/towers.txt

 From all of this you should be able to calculate the forces your system 
has to be able to withstand.  However, there is nothing here which will 
tell you what you have to do to to your roof to enable it to withstand 
these forces.

Perhaps someone can come up with some suggestions as to how to deal with 
this part.

As you will see when you get into this stuff, it is a rather large topic.

I hope this helps you to design a system that you'll be comfortable with.

73 de Jim Smith   VE7FO


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