Dave Platt wrote:
In article ,
Owen Duffy wrote:

That is not to say that loosening one or more guys guarantees failure...
but lots of tower accidents are *caused* by loosening guy wires.

Dropping a tree or part of it onto a guy wire is also a dangerous thing
to do.

At this point, I'd be tempted to suggest tackling the problem from the
other direction.

Don't just drop the tree in question!

Instead, do what's normally done if a tree needs to be removed from an
area with nearby stuff-you-don't-want-to-have-a-tree-fall-on. Have a
competent tree-removal service take the tree down, from the top on
down... remove and lower the limbs and upper trunk in sections.

It may be possible to remove the upper portion, and shorten the
remaining trunk enough that it will be physically impossible for that
part of the trunk to strike the tower or guys when it's felled no
matter how its fall happens to be channeled and no matter how badly it
bounces.

Or, it may be easier and safer to just take it all the way down to
ground level in pieces.

Yeah, this will take longer and cost more than just chainsawing
through the base of the trunk and yelling "Timmmbbbbbeeeeerrrrrrrrr!",
but it may cost less and be safer than trying to de-guy the tower.
It'll certainly cost less than the consequences of having the tower
fall down, as a result of deliberate guy removal/loosening or having
the tree fall on it.



Or, you leave the whole job to the tree removal company. Let them
decide how to do it, and their liability insurance covers the effects of
dropping a tree on the tower. They get to make the call about temporary
guys or not or chopping up the tree into chips from the top down or
having a 100 ton crane hold your tower up while the work is being done, etc.

(For that matter, I saw a very large pine tree being dismantled
yesterday, with a 100 foot crane reaching over a couple of houses to
pick up the pieces as the workers cut sections from the top down, rather
than the lowering chunks down strategy. )

Recognizing, however, that the tree removal company is going to charge
more, but maybe, they're confident. Or perhaps, one is hiring "Bob the
guy down the street with a chain saw" to do the work, and YOU are
accepting the liability and risk, so guy removal may be a prudent thing
to do.


Overall, I think the take home message from all these posts is that

a) dropping a single guy (or multiple guys) is non-trivial, and requires
some thought and planning
b) the odds of a strong wind coming up while you're unguyed is low, so a
temporary guying system could be acceptable
c) there's a wide variety in risk acceptance strategies among hams