[TowerTalk] torque arms or not?

[J. Hunt]

Typically twisting within any tower is deadly.  Once twisted to far, the tower will buckle and collapse.  
I inspect my towers for weld cracks and other anomalies annually.

A Torque Arm assembly is located 2/3rd up the main tower and reduces tower twist from an side mounted antenna array.
A Star Guy assembly is located at tower apex, twist movement - perhaps 1 degree.

The second tower only has Torque Arm assembly.


Thanks,
James
ki5dq

--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 1/8/17, john at kk9a.com <john at kk9a.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] torque arms or not?
 To: towertalk at contesting.com
 Date: Sunday, January 8, 2017, 9:10 PM
 
 Actually torque arms do almost nothing to stop twisting, you really need to go with a 6-way guy.  For that kind of wind, you might need the solid leg Rohn 45 and lots of guys.
 
 GL,
 John KK9A
 
 Subject:    [TowerTalk] torque arms or not?
 From:    DALE LONG <dale.long at prodigy.net>
 Reply-to:    DALE LONG <dale.long at prodigy.net>
 Date:    Sat, 7 Jan 2017 20:56:40 +0000 (UTC)
 
 This brings up a related question.  We lost a lot of towers in southern Haiti 
 during Hurricane Matthew. Most of them were newly built 100-120 ft Rohn 25 
 towers with adequate guying and torque brackets but not torque arms.
 Here is a question for the tower professional.  If you are not using a rotator, 
 but only some VHF antennas at the top, how important is it to add the torque
  arms. We use a baseplate with pier pin so we are allowing for some movement
 at  the base.
 Our tower in Dame Marie was hit by 145 mph blunt force winds and I dont know
 if  anything would have survived.  But several towers folded over, with the guy 
 anchors and guy wires intact. We are thinking that we need to move up from
 Rohn  25 just to survive the hurricanes, although the antenna wind load is minimal.
 To include torque arms or not, that is the question. (for tower without ham 
 rotator).  Will the oscillations be reduced by the torque arms?
 Dale - N3BNA
 
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