The only Big Grips that I have seen close to failure were installed on my
tower in Aruba. After four years they were badly corroded and I could
break the strands with my fingers.
John KK9A
To: Patrick Greenlee <patrick_g@windstream.net>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] My first introduction to guy-wire dead end grips
From: Kevin Kidd <kkbroadcastengineering@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 08:20:34 -0600
I was originally leery of the grips but now specify them exclusively.
The only grips that I have ever personally known to slide or fail were the
wrong grip installed on the wrong sized cable. Thankfully there was only a
couple wrong sized grips on a tall tower and the tower is still standing
even after it shed a couple guy wires in it's first storm. ALL grips were
checked after finding that... They are color coded for size and someone
installed the wrong grips. This was a case where a local government
accepted the lowest bid and got what they paid for.
We have had several local 300+ft towers come down over the years (2
tractor/vehicle, 2 ice, 1 tornado, 1 anchor failure that I can think of).
Most of these towers used grips and although I didn't check each and every
grip, I didn't find a single grip that had slipped or unwound. At one of
the tractor caused failures, I found a grip firmly attached to a short
piece of broken guy wire. The guy cable failed before the grip. A few of
the grips HAD failed where they were looped around a sharp edge without a
thimble. However, the tower leg pulled out and failed so it was mostly a
moot point.
I found a tower at station that we were working on where EVERY examined
wrap had been installed with the guy cable only extending about halfway
into the wrap. About half of the wrap was wrapped around nothing. This
was an AM tower with lots of wraps around guy insulators and every wrap
that I could see from the ground was installed in this manner. The tower
had been standing there for 20+ years and as far as I know, is still
standing now several years later.
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