FWIW: A friend of mine, N8GS, had a 70', Rohn 25G, tower fall down in
100MPH winds, because of a tree limb going thru the windward guys a few
years back. The NWS said we had "straight line winds" in excess of 100MPH.
The tower laid out flat and actually did very little damage to the
section's in the center part of the tower(the ground was flat where the
tower landed). These undamaged sections were recycled among several hams
in the area and are still in use today in non critical applications.
During that same storm a 750' broadcast tower a few miles away, also fell
down. It ended up piled around the base. I don't know the exact
distances, but it certainly did not lay out like the N8GS tower did.
I would think that the danger to falling is from damage to the guy systems
from trees. etc more than from a properly engineered tower simply blowing
down. There are "stories" from the OT'ers around here and almost all tower
failures I have ever heard about are from tree limbs, rouge cars, or
faulty maintenance!
It might be nice to hear about others experience to failures.
73,
Eric Moore,
K8CCA
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