[TowerTalk] Re-use cable clamps?

[Donald Chester]

This spring I plan to re-guy my tower. The old guy wires, which have been in place since 1981, are getting rusty enough to make me nervous.

The tower is 25G, 127' tall, base insulated and used as a 160m vertical and support for wire antenna. The guys are broken up every 18' to make them RF transparent through 40m. There are over 100 strain insulators in my guying system! The guy wire segments all have three cable clamps at each termination, plus the ends are served, per the Rohn manual.

I can re-use the insulators with no problem, but I am wondering about re-using the clamps. They have some surface rust, but don't look nearly as deteriorated as the wire, which is 3/16 EHS. The threads on the u-bolts still look good, and I believe it would take many more years for the bolts or saddles to rust through enough to cause failure.

Ordering new cable and re-using the old clamps and insulators would be a fraction of the expense of using Phillystran or terminating with Guy Grips. Since I am doing the work myself at my own leisure, the time involved for making up each guy wire using new or used clamps is not an issue. 

I'd also like to see some opinion on whether or not serving the dead ends following the cable clamps is really worth the trouble. None of the old clamps appear to have loosened up in over 30 years. 

It's worth noting that I almost lost an eye while assembling the original guy wires and serving the ends. It was a cold day, apparently enough to make the wire brittle, and one of the strands of EHS snapped while I was wrapping it and the 2" long piece hit me smack in the eye. Fortunately, since the broken shard was sharp as a needle, it hit sideways and not end-on. Needless to say, I wore my safety goggles from then on.

I put the entire tower up myself in 1981, single-handedly, using nothing more than an old Signal Corps leather climbing belt, probably circa Korean War. I have since thrown the belt away, and recently purchased a top quality climbing harness and associated safety equipment. I wouldn't attempt to erect another tower from scratch at this stage of the game, but assembling guy wires on the ground and replacing them one level at a time is a much less ambitious project.


Don k4kyv