[TowerTalk] Climbing and working on Rohn 25g/45g towers

[D. Calder]

Tuff Tug http://www.tuf-tug.com/index.htm is who we use on all our towers
for safety climbs. They will make one for anything.
And yes, we have little bitty 25g and 45g from sites we acquired.



73 Dave n4zkf

 

-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Drax Felton
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 5:29 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Climbing and working on Rohn 25g/45g towers

Alfred, My thoughts exactly.

If Rohn tower is able to be stacked to 180' as their catalog says there has
to be a way to safely climb the things.  With the advice I received from
this forum I bought a 6', it's tough to find any shorter length, shock
absorbing "Y" lanyard with 3 hooks.  One for my harnesses' backside and two
bigger hooks that will fit around two different tower legs.

I used to foolishly connect to the Z braces, but not anymore.

If I am hooking around the tower legs instead, at least, I'll have to break
FOUR Z brace welds each foot I fall as I plummet down the tower.
 That should slow my decent.  I am not an engineer, but I know gravity pulls
straight down and that is the tower's strongest direction. If one 10'
section fails there is another below it to then pick up slack for the now
slowed KB3X.

When a Z's corner weld fails, it seems to me that bar would bend and be
open, and then I would hit the next weld, and then the next, then the next,
and so on.

I searched on Google for ham accidents and it seems the accidents occur in
three categories:

1.  Ham screwed up by using only a belt without a harness, or wore nothing.
2.  Ham contacted power lines.
3.  The tower structurally failed from rust, having its' guys broken by
falling objects, or disconnected.

I can't find anything were someone fell with the right gear and still
crashed to the ground.
But that doesn't mean it never happened.





> Message: 7
> Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:11:01 -0500
> From: "Alfred Frugoli" <ke1fo at arrl.net>
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Climbing and working on Rohn 25g/45g towers -

> What is difficult in this entire conversation for me is that I'm not 
> an engineer - I'm trained as a manager and I'm an amateur radio 
> operator by choice.  You can talk about specs and theory all you want.  
> What I need to know is where do I connect my fall arrest lanyard.  It 
> seems to me that no matter where you connect to on xxG tower you're 
> connecting to a cross brace.  If I connect directly on the cross 
> brace, obviously I'm on the cross brace.  If I connect on the tubular 
> vertical member and I fall, the force still rests on the z bracing where
it is welded to the vertical tube.
>
> So, how does one safely connect their fall arrest lanyard on xxG tower?
> Must it be connected to multiple legs to be safe?
>
> A pictoral tutorial of this information would be helpful.  My knot 
> book with diagrams, pictures and drawings is invaluable to me - is 
> there such a thing for tower rigging and climbing?
>
> 73 de Al, KE1FO
_______________________________________________



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