[BC] Long Wire

[Mike McCarthy]

SNIPPED for brevity....

I have a "broken" skirt with midspan steel supoprt arms and jumpers around
it on a 6 wire skirt. It's a mechanical and electrical nightmare. Never
again. That is a wheel my strucutural people and I will re-invent using
fiberglass spacers, heavier wire and support members.

One other thing on the 6 wires...  On a skirt with that number of drape
wires, they should not only be a given distance to the supporting
structure, they should be be at least the same distance between each other
as to the tower or be evenly spaced around the tower as well.

I would NEVER use straight copper wire. It stretches far too readily and
doesn't contain anywhere near the same tensile strength. Copperweld is
lighter than straight copper. With the knowledge I possess now on grips
and such being available for Copperweld, its likely I will repeat this
same plan on my next skirt project....

MM

> When wind is a serious consideration, I would prefer adding
> stay guys (broken with insulators in the usual way) at the
> drape mid-points, pulling the drape wires further from the
> structure into a slim "egg beater" configuration. I have never modeled
> this but I expect an adjustment to the drape bottom
> height would be necessary to keep the total drape length at 90 degrees.
> While adding insulated drape guides is common I do not
> care for the idea of creating future problems, especially when
> it increases project cost. I do not believe in field testing
> the torsional moment rating of insulators, but perhaps that is
> just me. <g>
>
> The slightly greater loss of galvanized wire is offset by more
> wires of larger size and stranding, thus the performance
> difference becomes truly insignificant. Guy cable, grips and
> other accessories are readily available, so I see no reason to
> rule out galvanized guy cable for drape wires in skirts.
>
> If cost were no object I might be inclined to use stranded
> #4 or #2 copper, preferably bare to minimize weight, but
> I cannot see the justification for a fraction of a dB.