There is much debate in the towertalk archives on guying a freestanding
tower, especially Universal Towers that you should read through. I believe
that adding guy wires can make it a stronger structure, but I'm not a
mechanical engineer. I had a very similar 70' Universal tower, except my
top sections was homebrew with a flat bearing plate and larger than yours.
I had the tower in Illinois and used two sets of phillystran guys wrapped
around the leg and bracing. I later sent most of the sections to Aruba and
built a 50 foot tower which held 10m and 15m monobanders. It was
freestanding for a year and then I added one set of wimpy guys. I did not
use the manufacture's hardware as it was poor quality and instead I used
stainless steel bolts.
John KK9A
To: "towertalk@contesting.com" <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Guying a Universal Aluminum Tower
From: Dennis W0JX
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 07:20:25 -0800 (PST)
Has anyone out there successfully guyed a Universal aluminum tower? My
current
configuration is 30 taper, 26 st, 26 taper, 22 st, 22 taper,
18 st, 18 taper, and 14 top. It has a huge monstrous concrete base. It is 80
feet total in height and nothing else in on the tower. I had a TH6 on it for
12
years with no problems but just replaced that with a TH-11 (a fantastic
antennas BTW) which has a 12 sq. ft wind load, considerably more than the
TH6.
With high winds, it moves around quite a bit and I am uncomfortable with
that.
I am thinking of putting two sets of guys on it to stabilize the movement
without shifting a lot of the load to the guys. The tower is protected in
most
directions by mature trees that are taller than the tower and that break the
force of the wind quite a bit.
I have seen these towers with a set of rope guys at the top to minimize the
swaying but I think it was done without any real thought to it.
73, Dennis W0JX/8
Milan, OH
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