[TowerTalk] New FAA regulations affecting towers

[Patrick Greenlee]

I have seen a few dusters up close ranging from an old Steerman to 
modern purpose built.  The latter had an inclined sharpened blade 
positioned in front of the canopy  to cut wires.  I don't know how 
effective that arrangement was. I never saw it tested.

Patrick        NJ5G


On 7/17/2016 10:38 PM, Roger (K8RI) on TT wrote:
> Sounds like his antenna may have been a Rhombic.  They were very 
> popular for those who had the room back then.
>
> Crop dusting aircraft would likely cut a wire antenna or phone line 
> like it wasn't there, but a friend (I went to high school with) 
> misjudged the height of a power line and neatly removed the vertical 
> stabilizer from his Ag Cat.  With no lateral stabilization the torque 
> rolled it over and turned it into a lawn dart. It hit the ground going 
> almost straight down. killing him instantly.
>
> Those transmission lines are substantial and wound on a steel core.  
> That strong steel core is much larger than any typical antenna wire.
> The antenna might bring down a light plane but modern crop dusters are 
> built like the aeronautical version of a tank.
>
> We flew down to Visit my wife's folks in Florida over the Christmas 
> holidays some years back. A layer of ground fog forming at night is 
> quite common in the Florida peninsula and may not burn off until 9 or 
> 10 AM.
>
> A piper Cherokee pilot took off one morning, staying really low. He 
> apparently forgot about the high tension lines abt 2 miles W of (IIRC) 
> Tampa Bay Exec. He apparently panicked when he saw the first set pass 
> overhead and pulled up...right into the second power line. The only 
> thing left was the engine and prop rolled into a ball. There was a 
> notch in the one prop blade a good inch deep where it hit one of the 
> lines.  AFAIK power was not interrupted.
> They probably replaced that span.
>
> 73
>
> Roger (K8RI)
>
>
> On 7/17/2016 Sunday 10:59 PM, lstoskopf at cox.net wrote:
>> Waaay back in the early 50s when I was just getting started there was 
>> a Ham in central Kansas whose job was keeping oil wells pumping.  He 
>> and his wife lived in a very small house right in the middle of a 
>> batch of those 90 ft derricks that we all think of when we think of 
>> Texas oil. Anyway, he had a long length of wire running from his 'mud 
>> room' to one of the towers, then to another, etc for maybe 5 or 6 
>> towers and back to the shack. The towers were probably 800 ft 
>> spaced.   Fed with a open balanced tuner.  I'm not sure what bands he 
>> was on, but he could work DX!!!!!!  RF's got to go somewhere!
>>
>> So wondering how a long wire antenna fits into the regulation? His 
>> would have be a very invisible airplane catcher.
>>
>> N0UU
>
>
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