[TowerTalk] Taking down a tri-ex LM354

[Doug Renwick]

I have let BX type towers just free fall with no damage.  Of course they did
not fall on the ground but instead into a good layer of snow.

Doug

"Think of all the ways you can hurt yourself laughing."

-----Original Message-----

The point on water pipe is well made, but pipe should never be used 
where strength is involved.  Yah, I know there's a lot of it in use, but 
pipe is soft and bends far, far easier than structural steel tube of the 
same size. It's also heavy for the strength.  Tower sections are by far 
the strongest for the weight, but you want the load on all legs, not 
just two..

It shouldn't be used for masting either, but probably over half the 
installations out there use it.
If pipe is used for a mast to give a big tribander a few more feet and 
it bends, how do you get the antenna down?

We let one down yesterday (40' steel, not terribly heavy) from the W end 
of my shop, with a novel  approach, (N8ERFs idea. Thanks Dennis) at 
least to me.  There was a pulley at the top of the tower. We ran a rope 
through a snatch block at the base, up through the pulley at the top and 
back about a 100' to the SE to an anchor. There were also two guys held 
by two hams.  The rope ran NW from the pulley at the base of the tower 
to three wraps snubbed around a 10" diameter Spruce tree. The guys at 
the tree just slowly let the rope out while those to the SE helped keep 
the load light.Other than a bit of a communications problem (the shop 
was between the two groups so they could not see each other.)

73

Roger (K8RI)


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