After 50 years of “fooling around” with towers and tower work, including these past 20 years of so-called “professional” labor, I believed I’d seen everything when it came to guys doing things, well, “the wrong way” or some convoluted, contrived solution to an installation. Oh but I was wrong, Virginia…totally wrong.
The callsigns have been changed here to protect the innocent, as the announcer would intone on the DRAGNET radio show, way back when, and that’s the case here. No need for useless embarrassment, et cetera/
But helper Joe, KI4TZ, was up from Florida last week and we accomplished a pretty fair amount of work. One of which was the takedown of a 100-ft Rohn 25G tower. Free for the takedown, and since my supply of 25G was low, I decided to take the owner up on his offer after a site survey. During that survey, I noted that the top plate appeared to be a homebrew design–a square chunk of steel. But I didn’t climb up for a closer look. So….we were suprised to find that this installation simply mounted a pier pin base UPSIDE DOWN on the topmost section! Of course, this meant the Rohn ginpole would not pass by the flat plate. Using one of those machine shop bearings as well, the top section was extremely top heavy, so that once we did get it loose from the next lower section, it immediately rolled over. A dangerous situation all right.
But once that hurdle was crossed, all proceeded according the plan. The question remains however: WHY? Just when you think you’ve seen everything…
stay tuned….
