[TowerTalk] Tower takedown

[Dan Hearn]

I think your intuition is right Gary. If you think of the tower weight of
400 # being concentrated at the 1/2 height level of 10 ft, there is a
leverage situation working against your truck tailgate of roughly 3 to 4
times the weight. Think of the 10 ft height as one lever and the height of
your truck tail gate as a second lever. Same principle as the old nut
crackers. This assumes the base is pivoted  and I assume there is no
tiltover mechanism on the tower. Too bad. I wonder how you are going to haul
it. Rented trailer? I believe that  I have seen car wreckers that have a
sort of short tower like thing on the rear. Maybe he could get off to the
side and connect at 6-8 feet up and lower it.
  My son is a painter and he rents a device called a Genie TZ34 which is a
man lift with a basket and strong platform that extends to a bit over 34 ft.
It is trailer mounted and rents for $180 per day. It is quite sturdy and I
believe it could handle 400# easily when chained to the back side of the
tower. It has extension legs and you can tilt it out some distance from the
base. Be careful OM.
73, Dan, N5AR

-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of Gary Slagel
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 9:07 PM
To: TowerTalk
Subject: [TowerTalk] Tower take down scheme - physics problem

Thought I'd run this through the group and see what you thought... too much
math/physics for me to figure out.

I need to take down a Triex WT-51.  I'm traveling several hundred miles to
do it and won't have much help available.  I'm thinking crank the tower down
to its 21' nested position, back my pickup up to it, pull the hinged tower
over onto the pickup tailgate and slowly pull the pickup forward letting the
tower lean over, slowly kind of sliding down over the tailgate.

Of course, its not as simple as that, as I'll need to rig something up to
make it all slide smoothly and probably provide some extra support to the
tower as it slides.  I can figure all that out but am wondering what kind of
equivalent weight this will put on the tail end of the pickup.  The tower
weighs in the range of 400lbs.... I think the pickup would handle up to 1500
lbs or so on the back end.  I'm thinking the lever action of the tower is
going to apply much more the 400lbs to the pickup but no idea how much.

Any thoughts on how feasible this is?  As I said, I know I've got to do some
engineering to make process work but I'm just wondering if the pickup can
handle it?

Thanks for input,
Gary