[TowerTalk] Raising Towers

[Michael Tope]

On 12/26/2013 5:03 PM, Jim Lux wrote:
>
>> Jim, I had somewhat the same feeling until I scrolled down to the
>> "selfie" of the guy taken from the top of one of those homebrew 200'
>> towers made from chain-link fence top-rail. You can clearly see the
>> safety lanyard made from dacron rope with frayed ends that is holding
>> him in place. While I greatly admire the vigor of an 85 year old guy who
>> fabricates and installs 200' towers by himself, nobody should be under
>> any allusions that what he is doing is remotely safe (at least when it
>> comes to the climbing part of it).
>>
>
> Yeah, I finally found that one..
> I'm not so wild about climbing with just a belt. BUT.. if that's a 
> piece of kernmantle static line, which is kind of what it looks like, 
> I don't think that's the biggest of his problems.  I'd worry more 
> about one of the innummerable welds popping loose when the hook pulls 
> on it. And it kind of looks like he's just looped it through the rings 
> on his belt.
>
> But hey, safety is relative.  When I learned to rock climb in the 70s, 
> the "state of the art" was a swami belt of 20-25 ft of 1" webbing 
> wrapped around your waist. You tied on with either a figure 8 or a 
> bowline (which is what his hooks are tied on with). That was 
> considered perfectly safe compared to crazy guys who would just tie 
> the rope around their waist, or even crazier guys who just went rope 
> free.
>
> That this was a few short decades after the introduction of the 
> "belay" and anchoring the belayer to the wall, as opposed to the late 
> 19th century approach of tie everyone to the same rope, and move 
> together, and "the leader must not fall".
>
> So 'YRV thinks that he's ok, and while he's doing stuff that *I* 
> wouldn't do, and neither would most people, it's not like he's 
> climbing up that 200 ft tower with NO safety (which, in fact, people 
> do..).  He's at sort of the 1960s-1970s safety practice level.
>
> Should people take his example as one to follow?  Certainly not. 
> Should we tell him "don't climb, until you have a certified harness, 
> and use standard industry practice, and by the way, are you a 
> certified welder?"  I don't think so. He clearly knows the 
> consequences of failures (since he has the mishaps page).
>
> It's sort of like people setting off on a solo sailboat trip across an 
> ocean. Or jumping horses over fences. Or off-road racing.  It's a 
> fundamentally unsafe thing to do.  There are more or less safe ways 
> you can do it, but that doesn't change a lot of things.  Everyone gets 
> to make their own decisions (hopefully with good advice, but free to 
> ignore it).
>

Well, he is 85 and still climbing, so I guess he has either been very 
lucky and/or he is being more careful than what the pictures suggest 
:-). One can argue there is risk taking and there is stupid. Off-road 
racing (to use on of your examples) is no doubt risky, but off-road 
racing with all your lug nuts loose is arguably both risky and stupid :-)

In any case, if I make it to 85, I hope I am that spry.

73, Mike W4EF...................