"Crazy George" wrote in message
...
Thierry:

Before you get someone killed, hire some competent high iron workers.
Anyone who drops a section of tower because they are uninformed on tower
safety is going to raise the insurance rates for everyone, never mind the
human life you may take.

Hi,

I think that we know that my friend. This is not our first tower and we all
already have do similar installations, and I even wrote a short article
about it as well http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/qsl-rotator-tower.htm p2-5.
However I am personally less familiarized with such a job than my friends.
But on the contrary I was more security oriented that most of them. But as
there was only one director on the field, I could always go against his
decision or we have no more time to buy the additional material. All people
were in site and we had to erect the tower now, not tomorrow...
That said in practice we could do the job without problem, even if not
everybody had an helmet or gloves for example and didn't think that some
pulley 'd break.

3 people climbed on the tower : 2 most of the time and a third to check some
detail. There was also only with people directing the work.
One of us was specialist in aluminium work (on plane, etc), another one was
expert in scaffolding before he retired and a third used to work on sloping
roof and on high chimneys. We have not really high iron workers.

For the gin-pole the guy who built it in assembling 2-3 tubes recognized
immediately that his system was faulty. But is worked up to over 10m high
without problem as long as the all system was well check and secure with
ropes (4mm steel cable, the one use by the eletrical winch).

Of course I think that in erecting any tower we learn something new each
time.

This time, 2 rollers attached to the lift system (a new one) made of steel
broke !, we lost two other pulleys because they were made of teflon. They
were replaced with steel ones. Hopefully we had full of spare parts up to
mini-clamps because we already learnt lessons from previous similar
experiences. Even the winch (a new one) didn't wind correctly and we had to
unwind it completely and wind it up without making knots. This steel cable
4mm think will be replaced by a new 50m roll.

But the simpler the best : another time to another friend who desired to
erect a 14m high cranking tower (from the same manufacturer) 60 cm wide (8
years ago now) we simply assembled all the tower horizontally at ground
level, then pulling on ropes to erect it progressively vertically. This
method was faster and much simpler. We were 18 people, 15 at ground pulling,
2 other holding the tower and a third in a tree with a "tire-fort" (sort of
manual winch, cannot translate). This solution worked perfectly without
error or broken part. Good to know.

Thierry


--
Crazy George
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