The W1CW/W1YL QTH was very close to that site - see the cover of
December QST 10 years ago to see what it did to their main tower...
After personally seeing what a full fledged Hurricane can do - I think
speculating what you could do to stop Mother Nature is pretty much so
futile..
One thing my Dad (W1CW) spotted after Hurricane Andrew was that if a
tower was left standing, it was one that was "double guyed" at each
level - as such the three major towers at their site here just outside
of Tampa all use this scheme with two guy wires per tower face.
This means twice as much expenditure for the guys as there are six guy
wires at each level instead of three, but the end product is towers
which are very sturdy and the top of the 135 foot Rohn 55 feels like you
are at 10 feet up - think you could put a VW Beetle up there...
Another side benefit of this is that when guy maintenance is needed you
can lower a guy and still have pull in that direction since there are
two guys headed in each of the three guying directions.
The only main downsides to this technique other than expense have been
harder to snake yagis around the guys...and another which got
increasingly troublesome as my weight increased...you do not have the
luxury of face climbing the tower at the guy points and have to climb on
the corner/leg -when the towers first went up I could wriggle (spelling
W0UN?) in between the pairs of guys!
Last Saturday was the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, rumors still
persist that only conservative ratings on wind speed were released by
the government - even the new revised numbers were generous ... if
something like this comes any where near you get the hell away - DO NOT
FOR A SECOND THINK THAT YOU HAVE IT UNDER CONTROL, Mother Nature can be
a REAL Mother.
73,
Jim, K4OJ
Richard M. Gillingham wrote:
> A 1200' tower in Princeton FL (just north of Homestead) was flattenned
> by Andrew. As was darn near everything else down there.
>
> Gil, W1RG
>
>
>
> Rob Atkinson, K5UJ wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone:
>>
>> This is a question for the tower professionals (but of course anyone
>> can chime in).
>>
>> The local newspaper's wx section yesterday had a writeup about
>> Hurricane Andrew since this was the 10th anniv. of its landfall. It
>> stated that it sustained winds of 165 mph with gusts of over 175 mph.,
>> when it hit Fla. just south of Miami. As a ham I naturally thought
>> first of the Miami area commercial towers (was pretty sure ham
>> antennas all blew down) and wondered if they were built down there to
>> make it through something like that? Are commercial towers for tv
>> and radio etc. built for something like that down there or does
>> everyone keep their fingers crossed and stay out of the way downwind
>> of the towers and get the heck out of town? I can't imagine building
>> a tall tower that could survive an extended blast of cat. 5
>> hurricane. Just wondering.
>>
>> 73,
>>
>> Rob Atkinson
>> K5UJ
>> k5uj@hotmail.com
>>
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>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> any weather station price.
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