[TowerTalk] Force12 rivets

[Dick Green WC1M]

I have four Force12 antennas, including a C3E, and have never had a rivet
failure. I'm not an engineer, but it seems to me that the rivets they've
chosen are more than adequate for their smaller antennas. On first blush, it
sounds like the hole was too large or the rivet wasn't pulled through all
the way. That said, my recollection is that most of the tubing joints in my
C3E use a row of three rivets. It's unlikely all three rivets at any
particular joint would fail. I don't have the manual handy, but I vaguely
remember that the joints at the element tips use a single rivet or maybe
even a screw, probably because length adjustment may be necessary and you
wouldn't want to have to remove three rivets to do that. If that's where the
failure is, then I'd bet it's a single rivet or screw.

I would hesitate to use rivets 90-degrees or 180-degrees apart. The joints
in Force12 antennas are designed to be secured on one side of the tubing
only. If you drill and install additional rivets, you could pull the inner
tubing out of round and cause it to get stuck in the outer tubing, making
disassembly difficult or problematic.

73, Dick WC1M


-----Original Message-----
From: K8RI on TT [mailto:k8ri-on-towertalk at tm.net] 
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 3:30 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Force12 rivets

On 2/18/2011 1:27 PM, Larry stowell wrote:
>
> Barry
> "Single rivet"?  My C31XR had 3 per joint.
My C19XR and an older style WARC-7  also have 3 and none of them are 
blind. They look like conventional pop rivets in a row on the bottom 
with about 3/4" spacing at each joint.

73

Roger (K8RI)
> 73 Larry K1ZW
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Barry
> Gross
> Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 12:02 PM
> To: towertalk at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Force12 rivets
>
> Thanks for all the advice!  What I think I'll eventually do when I get the
antenna down, is drill
> perpendicular holes one inch proximal (boomward) to all the existing
single rivets and add a second
> rivet.
>
> 73, Barry N1EU
>
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Mickey Baker<fishflorida at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>> Careful drilling "perpendicular holes" - better to go down the length
>> of the tubing a few cm so as not to provide a weak point in the element.
>>
>>
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