[TowerTalk] [Fwd: Towers Brought Down!]

[Pete Smith]

Doesn't surprise me at all, and of course Bill is a reliable source.

What does surprise me, though, is that it is standard practice in the business for ham-sized guyed towers to use only three ground anchor points, to each of which all the guys on that side are connected through equalizer plates.  I'm sure the theory is that a guy wire will break before the guy anchor does, but it seems to me that putting the top guy set on separate anchor rods (maybe even in the same concrete foundation, but a few feet further out) would provide a useful bit of redundancy and prevent the whole thing falling over like a cut tree if the anchor rod fails, through corrosion or other unseemly contingency.

73, Pete N4ZR

At 03:32 AM 1/17/2007, Cqtestk4xs at aol.com wrote:
>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
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