FBI Tower Twisting

Those dishes are likely not getting a very good looking signal when it swings that far out of line. Has anyone fixed it yet?

had a rigger tell me about that video yesterday, as we were standing at the base of one that was swaying at the top like a wet noodle :\\

H.

I do not know quite how the wrong things that are so visible in the video went so very wrong but, some serious lack of business acumen, greed, miscommunication, possibly deceit and outright fraud, and many other things are likely involved. I would expect some seriously irate tower space customers to already be actively pursuing legal recourse by now, those dishes have too narrow of a beam width (several dishes likely to be 3 degrees tops) to overcome that kind of wiggling.

Never mind the link performance, the tower has certainly started to experience metal fatigue. I think whoever "engineered" this forgot to engage a structural engineer. At a minimum, he would have recommended re-guying with torque arms. At the worst, he would have advised against that degree of loading on the tower. I hope the tower owner is looking out for the integrity of the structure. After all humans have to climb up to fix it.

FBI == Federal Agency, exempt from building codes, permits, inspections, etc.

Someone probably slapped this thing up without consulting a structural engineer.

I find it strongly reminiscent of Galloping Gertie:

Cheers! Rich

That's good... at least it kept them awake.

USPS... what a bunch of bums. Like going to a bank or the grocery...

...Jim Thompson

I don't know that I'd want to have the job of carrying a letter coast-to

-coast for 41 cents, though. Besides having to put up with all those co-workers with Uzis.

Back in the Old Country, the Canadian post office would charge about twice as much and take twice as long. If you ever get nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union, try sending an urgent parcel to Canada.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Phil Hobbs wrote in news:3FTLj.11836$ snipped-for-privacy@fe085.usenetserver.com:

...Jim Thompson

that's why UPS/Fed-Ex/DHL et al haven't taken that segment of the business. Although they probably -could- make money at it... ;-)

they would all be semi-auto Uzis,no different than any handgun;one shot per trigger pull,and much harder to conceal!

That may be, but if they are privately owned structures, they were most likely built with a permit.

If, as the subject line implies, this was put up by the FBI, we can't be certain of that.

A few years back, the Postal Service opened up a new post office near me. Problem: They had gone ahead and built it without consulting local authorities. Part of this oversight included a failure to determine where the public sewer line was. The blueprints spec'd the service line in the wrong direction.

Because the local authorities had no jurisdiction, they could not prevent construction from going ahead, or the facility from being occupied. For several weeks, employees had to borrow bathroom facilities from a neighboring business.

Around here we have an annual reenactment of the Pony Express... twice as fast as the present-day USPS ;-)

...Jim Thompson

The vast majority of towers are done by Triax or Rohn. They both have structural engineers, and access to licensed structural engineers in every State and Canadian province, and internationally.

I can't claim any real knowledge about broadcasters towers but i will bet that most of them are designed by real licensed engineers. Most of Triax and Rohn tower business is with customers with specific needs and rarely over 200 feet high.

I was personally involved with the process of erecting and removing a double handful of towers from 60 feet to 250 feet high, and in the process learned who built hundreds of various towers in the metropolitan LA area.

Broadcast towers are generally taller than 250 feet. Some are well over 1000 feet. The last site I worked at was 1749 feet AAT.

That would be a real bugger to climb. Who replaced the warning lights on that thing?

I met a guy who did that job, when I was in college. After the first hundred feet it doesn't matter. ;-)

The ground crew.

In terms of fall hazard no, in terms of energy to climb it yes.