Thursday, May 27, 2010
Tower Destruction
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This is pretty cool in a geeky sort of way - six different camera angles of the same event - blowing the support lines to an antenna tower. I've always thought that they'd fall in one piece, but I was wrong - the sections fall apart as they come down, and the debris doesn't go very far. And, I've seen the aftermath of a FM broadcast tower after an ice storm brought it down - and the sections were surrounding the base. The Poor Farm was without power for nine days after that little ordeal.
Anyhoo, I thought the video had some wow factor. But, I'm weird that way.
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2 comments:
A) Yeah, major wow, and that's a good-sized tower.
B) Guyed towered usually wad themselves up in a knot around their base, often making a mess of any buildings there. They aren't very strong other than vertically and if even a couple of guys hold, they don't wander much on the way down. A typial failure mode is a girt (horizontal) and/or hog rod (diagonal) breakage under stress (often torsional), at which point the verticals start to splay, guys go slack and it starts mashing itself.
If you ever see a tower either vibrating or twisting back and forth in a high wind, get away fast!
Some celphone and other heavily-loaded towers have anti-torsion guy wires, pairs on every guy axis and most levels.
(I think the top guys are still intact on the LORAN tower, so it falls pretty straight).
Some self-supporting towers fall more-or-less in a line but even they tend to break once they get very far from vertical.
Definitely pretty neat!
Sad to see LORAN going away, though.
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