[TowerTalk] Replacing guys and C31XR report

John Fleming john at wa9als.com
Sun Sep 18 22:21:21 EDT 2005



K7LXC at aol.com wrote:
>     OF COURSE you want part synthetic and part EHS. The synthetic guy under 
> tension is easily severed with a razor knife...bye, bye tower. It also burns 
> easily. You want the last 15' or so to be EHS to the anchor so that neither of 
> those situations are possible. 

Ideally, yes.  I don't require the ideal here.  I guess our coyotes and 
deer don't like Kevlar, and where do ya all live and who are your 
enemies that you have to worry about someone cutting down your tower 
with a razor knife?  If they wanted to do that, wouldn't they be able to 
figure out how to cut the EHS too?

>     It's a matter of speculation with no overwhelming reason that I've seen 
> to do it one way or another. I've used Phillystran and recommend it for any 
> populated tower; that is, a tower with several antennas on it, particlarly wires 
> or sidemounted yagis. And yes, you may introduce some destructive interaction 
> with EHS but I don't know of anyway to predict it until the antennas are 
> installed. If in doubt - go with the synthetic guys again, you know how they'll 
> work. 

Yep, I'm not getting any encouragement for switching to all steel.  I 
just considered it because I thought it might outlast ME.

> nothing but good to say about the tower and the C31XR!  (The guy break could 
> probably have been avoided if I had treated the terminations differently!  I 
> just used cable clamps and taped the folded-over end of the cable in 
> tapering fashion from above downwards.)
> 
>     Okay. Does any tower or wire rope manufacturer recommend this technique? 
> No, they don't. Your mistake was to violate the LXC Prime Directive to "DO 
> what the manufacturer says". The converse is also true. 

Well, it's not as catchy, but you really need to amend the Prime 
Directive to say "DO what the manufacturer says - If they have proven 
themselves to be experts -AND- actually provide detailed instructions."

If memory is accurate, 6 years ago Glen Martin provided one termination 
diagram that showed "saddling the dead horse" and no specific treatment 
of the end of the dead horse cable end.  I figured that using some tape 
to form a taper would be better than nothing.  It might be the one thing 
I didn't ask on the reflector compared with hundreds I did.  Duh, I 
guess at the time I thought grips were only for EHS, but I see there are 
Philly Grips too.  So if I use these, won't the ice still accumulate there?

>     Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. A local guy did the same thing 10 years 
> ago or so - the guy broke and the tower came down. 

Thanks.  That guy must've had a lot on the tower and some bad WX? 
Losing one guy shouldn't drop a tower without some significant provocation.

73 - John, WA9ALS


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