[BC] The Worst I've Ever Seen!

[Mark Croom]

A few years back I was introduced to a guy who does aviation mechanics for
his living, who is also a ham operator. He had a couple of engines in
process for rebuild in his well-equipped machine shop.

He was in the process of building a kit plane, and his work on the fuselage
that was done up to that point was really nice.

On the other hand, he had wrecked his fold-over tower by using a piece of
steel that was FAR too heavy as his antenna support at the top, something
anybody with a few month's tower experience would have known intuitively. I
decided not to ask about it because I'm sure it wasn't one of his proudest
moments ;-)

He turned out to be a pretty decent pilot, too. But a mechanical engineer he
was not.

I would agree that the tower in this photo is a little scary, but there is
some outside the box thinking there, especially that base insulator rig. You
AM guys--am I wrong to be concerned that the bandwidth of a pole like that
as a radiator might not be real red-hot? Of course it probably helps that
the station is near the top of the band. Like Dave D, I have to wonder how
the thing was built to begin with.

Wow.

Mark
MN

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 7:02 AM, Mike McCarthy <towers at mre.com> wrote:

>
> I find the suspended base insulator concept ingenius. While I concur that
> tower is in a very precarious state, guying every 30 ft. at the weakest
> point of the mast isn't a terrible design on it's own merit.  The person
> who did the design was clearly knowledgeable.  Just brute force
> frugal...and trades skilled. I have to give the guy credit.
>
> MM
>