I saw an interesting video last night...
The local repeater group in Bay City, Mi lost their repeater antenna 2 years
ago... It was sidemounted on a 200 foot commercial tower... The fella cutting
the grass in the park did not pay attention and snagged one of the guy wires
with the tractor, and snapped it... The tower assumed a distinct bow... After
scratching their nether regions for awhile (days), the decision was made by
the tower owners to pull the tower the rest of the way down to prevent it
from "falling over sideways and hitting some houses"... (ya, ya, ya... I
know... remember, I'm only the messenger... )
Anyway, the scenario goes they decided to do this right at dusk so the public
wouldn't see it coming down (!? :) ... they got a rope/cable (couldn't tell
in the video) on it somewhere near the top and using a 4X4 pickup they
proceeded to __pull__ it over in the direction of the open, grassy area of
the park... which was the direction the center was bowed towards, i.e.
pulling against the remaining guys... well sir, seems like the back guys were
stronger than they figured and with the increased compression forces from the
down sloping rope/cable the big bow in the middle increased towards the
truck, the tower ducked down until it had slack in the remaining guys, it
appeared to have broke/unhooked the tow line, and crumpled directly away from
the tow direction (partially towards the videographer causing the picture to
get a bit shaky(er) )... it landed across an unoccupied building and, not so
incidentally, the power lines for the neighborhood and the park....
I suspect that Mr. Murphy is still snuckling and chortling over that one....
Denny
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