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Re: [TowerTalk] Safety jackets for guy wires.

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Safety jackets for guy wires.
From: Patrick Greenlee <patrick_g@windstream.net>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2015 09:44:28 -0500
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
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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