Posted on 01/05/2015 4:51:15 AM PST by DFG
I’d like to see him climb the 4,300 foot tower I saw on my first airplane ride (that was in South Dakota as well IIRC). The pilot showed me on the map the 4300’ tower and we were flying at about 4500-4800 feet (looked like we were right next to it).
Flying around towers is not the problem it is those nasty guy wires that are the problem.....
yes, indeed. I just was saying, there are a lot taller towers out there to be climbed than this 1500’ one in the article.
That would be exciting.
As an old rock climber I must say that the fall protection equipment I’ve seen construction guys use doesn’t always seem entirely adequate to me.
Makes no difference how tall a tower is, I’m NOT climbing it.
In fact, I am seeking someone to come and take down a large amateur radio antenna which I had someone put up for me a number of years ago. I am too old and too scared to even attempt such a task and the height of my tower is only 70 feet.
Somewhere I have a couple of photos in the KC Star from 1947, IIRC, of WDAF-TV getting the antenna put on their tower. One of the pics shows a gent JUMPING from antenna to tower!!! Tower was about 1400ft at that point.
3 guys climbed the tower that morning about 8am and did not come down till about 6pm!!! One of the gents was my grandfather. The boss took the crew out for a big steak dinner as a reward for getting the antenna on.
I am gonna have to find that paper and get it scanned.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
LEDs don’t generate heat so the light could get caked in snow and ice.
He does it for a living, how is that a daredevil? If I tried it that would make me a daredevil.
Made some other parts do the same for me.
Wouldn’t be surprised if OSHA paid this outfit a visit after the video was posted. Looks like they just randomly attached their FAS whenever they felt like taking a break from climbing.
I remember stories on that in the old days.
I walked steel at thirty feet in the early 70s. By the tie I was 30, I could not do it. The brain could not allow it any longer.
Must be ASL not AGL.
Tallest tower is about 2,000’ AGL give or take
BTW, I could get up there, but I would never make it down. I am more like a cat than a mountain goat.
It was somewhere along the way between Windom, MN and Sioux Falls, SD back about 22 years ago when I was working on water towers. My Boss flew the plane and I got to go along because I had never been in an airplane before. He pointed out the tower, showed me the map and altimeter in his plane as we flew past it and asked me how I’d like to change a light bulb on that tower.
I recall saying, “no thanks, too much of a climb”; his response was - well, they do ride on an elevator (a seat tied to a winch basically), but the ascent and descent takes hours.
Back when I was in school, I had a part time job at an Iowa City radio station, mostly to babysit the automated FM station.
I got a $25 bonus for climbing one of the 300 foot towers to change two of the big bulbs.
The top of the tower swayed about a foot back and forth. I was glad to be inside the stair cage with safety hooks...
I’m feeling the force of gravity trying to pull me down and I’m not even 1,500 feet up.
I’m not that fearless.Thats one job I hope pays well because the person who does really earns his pay.
I’d be willing to bet that it was my misunderstanding of the flight map (I’m not sure I am using the correct term there - sort of a terrain map) and the altimeter. If the altimeter was calibrated against Mean Sea Level (MSL), then this would be above sea level, not above ground level.
I suspect that is the case, because I doubt the 4 seat Cessna we flew in had a radar based altimeter. Still, the tower we flew by was ridiculously tall.
If that’s the one I’m thinking it is, I can’t watch it without getting dizzy...in a chair on the ground! :)
BTW, not long after I first saw this video, a local tower worker fell to his death: Worker Killed In 1,000-Foot Fall From Newton Tower
Not sure why but the KVLY-TV tower, put up in 1999, in North Dakota is still listed everywhere I checked as the tallest structure in the U.S. at 2063 feet.
I have long been aware of that particular tower because a crazy relative of mine, a skydiver with some 3000 jumps, climbed that thing with a couple of his pals and “BASE-jumped” from it, as goes the terminology (dives made from Building, Antenna, Span or Earth).
You ought to see the video from that stunt. That tower was swaying in the wind like a giant bamboo pole. As someone has already said, the truly lethal danger was the guy wires...if they blew into one of them they were dead men.
Of course it was all highly illegal so the vid includes footage of the men hitting the ground, trying to gather their chutes and scrambling to their SUV.
BTW they did a BASE jump off Half-Dome in Yosemite too and there they had to cut away their chutes (as planned) in order to avoid the Federales.
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