[TowerTalk] Tower Climbing Harness

[Dennis Severns]

Brent

The exofit seems to be a very good tower harness, I do not use one myself, but other crew members with the tower company I work for use them.

You should consider if you really need that much harness, Tower harnesses are normally designed  to keep the worker tied off 100% of the time (when used with the proper fall protection lanyards, positioning devices and safety climbing devices). That is the reason for the six D-rings on the harness, The back D-ring is for attaching a fall protection lanyard, normally a double lanyard with large ladder hooks for clipping to the tower. The front chest D-ring is for use of a cable grab that is attached to a safety climb cable permanently mounted on the climbing ladder on most newer commercial towers (not needed on most ham radio towers)
And the four side D-rings are for positioning either using a positioning lanyard or re-bar hooks. one good feature of the exofit is the built in bosun's seat that really helps if you have to spend a long time in the harness.

I personally use an Elk River Tower harness that I found in a  Pawn shop  for less than  $80.00 and like it  a lot. It sells new for about the same as the DBI Sala Exofit. If you do not need all the features of a full tower harness you may be better off going with just a full body harness with side D-rings. also there are some very nice harnesses made for rescue and entertainment rigging that would be worth looking at.

Some companies to look at on the web are of course DBI Sala, Elk River, Miller, MSA, Petzl work solutions, Yates, Rescue Technology and CMC rescue. Petzl and Yates make some very nice harnesses that are  used by friends of mine in the arena rigging industry

Good luck with whatever you decide to go with and stay safe on the steel.

Dennis Severns kc0sul
Professional.Tower Tech/Rigger
hamrigger at yahoo.com
 

Brent Childers <w5ww at hotmail.com> wrote: To All,

I am in the market for a new tower climbing harness.  I am interested in 
hearing from the group on their recommendations.

My criteria are:

1. Safety
2. Comfort
3. Cost

I am considering the ExoFit™ Full Body Harnesses as it looks to be very well 
built and comfortable.

So please respond directly and I will summarize for the group.

73 - Brent

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