[TowerTalk] [Fwd: Towers Brought Down!]

[Cqtestk4xs at aol.com]

Didn't somebody just ask recently whether the loss of one guy would be  
fatal to a tower?  Here's a convincing bit of evidence (if you can  
believe the article) ...

Dave    AB7E
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
A well constructed tower can easily stand up to having one guy wire  
released.  In fact the guy wire can be snapped and still be left  standing.
 
One of my 200 foot Rohn 55's guy wires were caught by a front end loader  
about five years ago.  Before I could tell him to stop he snapped one of  the guy 
wires at the 40 foot level.  I ran like hell, but over my shoulder  I could 
see the tower wiggling and the two 40 meter Yagis really shaking after  the guy 
wire snapped.  After I checked my skivies I went back to the  tower hooked up 
a new guy wire to replace the old one.
 
When the tower was disassembled last summer I checked out the sections  and 
all appeared to be fine...no bends, kinks etc in the sections.  It  looked so 
good I hauled it out to KH6.
 
The bottom line is, most TV/AM towers are not inherently self  supporting.  
They come to a point at the bottom which means they HAVE to be  guyed.  Drop 
the right guy or two and down they go.  
 
A good source for info on this sort of stuff is the reflector called tower  
pro on Yahoo.  Most of the guys on the site are getterdone  professional tower 
guys and if you can get past all the bitching and  misspellings it can be 
pretty informative (at times).
 
Bill K4XS/KH7XS