Re: [TowerTalk] Safety jackets for guy wires.

[Patrick Greenlee <patrick_g@windstream.net>]

Rag sailors often put covers on their shrouds (like guys for the mast.)  
There are two basic kinds, both in UV resistant high vis white plastic. 
One fits the wire snugly and is probably not what you want.  The other 
is much more visible and is over an inch in diameter.  It uses plugs in 
the ends to center the covers on the cable. Available at your local boat 
shop that serves sailboats.
This is not rocket surgery nor brain science.  Make your own as 
described here in a recent post by slitting a PVC pipe and placing a cap 
at the ends to capture the pipe to the wire.  Go a step further and get 
great visibility.   Spray with international orange, dayglow pink, or do 
diagonal stripes algternating dayglow green with red.
Patrick     NJ5G

On 6/9/2015 11:55 AM, Donald Chester wrote:
> Bill W5VX wrote:
>
> > One thing that I
> didn't see or missed was something to put on the guy wires to protect me
> from hanging myself while mowing the yard. I noticed that the electric
> company (Magic Valley Electric Company) had put long plastic tubes around
> their back guys on their poles. I called them and asked if I could buy three
> to put on my 3 bottom guys for my 120 foot Rohn tower.  They said that they
> didn't sell them but gave me the suppliers phone number in San Antonio. I
> called them and the fellow I talked to was a ham and said he was coming down
> this way and would bring me 3 if I would give him lunch. He brought them to
> the house and for the price of my wife making him a ham sandwich!
>
> > Those things have saved my old bald head many times. If you have bare guy
> wires you might think about putting them on...very easy. Mine are
> fluorescent yellow, about 1" in diameter and about 8 feet long.  I don't
> think the price was outlandish. I bet they are available lots of places.
> > They just snap on your guy wires.
> I used some of those after I put up my 127' tower back in 1981 for the same 
> reason.  A  local farmer leases the crop land here and keeps the place mowed 
> off.  I wanted to make sure whoever he hired to do the mowing would clearly see 
> the guy wires and not take down the tower with his tractor.  The local power 
> company sold me mine for a few bucks each.
>
> But I had one problem with them.  UV from the sun eventually destroys them. 
> After a couple of years, the fluorescent yellow turned into a dingy 
> greyish-white. The plastic finally deteriorated to the point that I could break 
> pieces off pieces of the plastic and it would crumble in my hand. I also notice 
> the yellow on ones the power company uses on utility poles fading in exactly 
> the same manner, and I have seen remaining pieces of ones that have fallen 
> apart still hanging onto sections of the guys.
>
> I finally replaced mine with 1/2" white PVC pipe.  I sawed a slit lengthways 
> along the edge of the pipe, just  wide enough to allow them to slip over the guy 
> cable, then using PVC glue, then glued a couple of scrap  pieces of the next size 
> larger PVC pipe to close the slit at each end, to hold them in place. Those have now 
> been in place for at least 15 years and the plastic is still pretty much intact.
>
> Don k4kyv
>
>
>
>
>
>                                         
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