[TowerTalk] Screw Anchor Question

[Dennis OConnor]

 I have two towers, 130' lightly loaded and 150' with LARGE antenna loads - way, way beyond Rohns data for 25G...   They are installed with screw anchors into sandy ground... They have been up more than ten years without any incident or evidence of failure... Storms with recorded gusts to 89 mph have happened over those years... In Michigan we have freeze thaw cycles up the bungees...

So why does it work for this clueless ham? 
Well, ol clueless here designed and installed it so that there is a separate anchor for every 60 feet of tower, i.e. only two guys per anchor... And the steepest guy angle to any anchor is 45 degrees, while it's lower mate is roughly 30 degrees... My suspicion is that the tower sections will bow enough to gyrate and twist the tower down before the guy anchors will pull out...  Limiting the load to each screw by keeping the guy wire angle low, is the key in my book...

denny




			
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