KETV Tower Topples (Omaha)

theomahachannel.com ^

[GailA]

It's very rare for a transmission tower to go down, usually RHON towers are very stable. It is usually an act of nature, like the ice you site or a tornado that brings them down. Hubby has climbed many of them in his younger days (he's 30 years he's been a two way radio tech)

[Jar Jar Binks]

Never underestimate the power of the Force.

[holyh2o]

The land needed iron...

[The_Media_never_lie]

They were trying to convert to HDTV and instead converted to NDTV.

[southernnorthcarolina]

Saw some file of a 2,000' tower in NC (Raleigh area) a few years back that got covered with a thick layer of ice after a freak storm. As the sun came up, it began to melt the East side of the tower. Huge blocks fell off the one side, then the stress became so great the tower just twisted and fell. It was quite an amazing thing to see. A lot of force pent up in a structure like that...

Interesting. I remember the Raleigh tower falling, but I hadn't heard the diagnosis. The things engineers have to think about... I'm sure the tower was designed with the strength to carry the weight of an ice storm of historic severity. But they didn't count on asymmetric melting, and I can't say that thought would have occurred to me, either.

[ARCADIA]

"Sounds like they didn't get the tension on the guy wires right. Or one of them let go."

They probably overloaded the thing by simply clamping yet another big antenna on an existing tower. It sounds like it was mounted pretty high on the tower so the cable weight must have been enormous. These cables are 5-8 inches in diameter!

[The Coopster]

No, the headline wasn't followed by: (X jobs lost)

;-)

[jlogajan]

About 30 years ago up here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, they were just building a new tower, must have been around 1200-1400 feet. They were just topping it with a big tri-antenna. It was to be part of an antenna farm for most of the local TV stations. Seven guys were on the tower. It came down. They all died.

[The Coopster]

They are stable, but also extremely dangerous going up. My cousin is an ironworker, and got his start erecting these things. It's not uncommon for men to be killed during the construction process, usually due to human error that results in the lifting mechanism or some other heavy object crashing to earth, taking the victim with it. He is notorious for taking cameras up and snapping photos from insanely elevated locations.

No thanks.....

[liberalnot]

it augurs the fall of warren buffet's investments.

[Willie Green]

The tower was probably made of cheap foreign steel and erected by illegal aliens.

[Focault's Pendulum]

It's very rare for a transmission tower to go down,

True....but then again...I've hit middle age.

[1rudeboy]

LOL

[GailA]

To true, the tower crews are not always the brightest bulbs in the world. DK has told crews more than once to do a specific thing to fix a transmission problem BUT the crews do what they think is necessary to get up and back down ASAP..usually necessitates a second trip up to follow his 'original' instructions to fix the problem.

[chance33_98]

:) You never disappoint!

[bert]

>>>>>KETV<<<<<

ABC? NBC? CBS? FOX?

[bert]

A Diplomatic insertion here.....

Entropy allowed conditions to develop that allowed the previously resistable forces of gravity to attract the tower to the ground.

[shotgun_mary]

KETV is the local ABC affiliate. The story is that when the put up the temporary guy wires they anchored them to the inner guy points, not the outer guy points. The temps were on the top section, they had planned on putting the new antenna up the next day. WOWT, local NBC affiliate who's tower is right next to it, was damaged as well. KETV guy wires did damage to their guy wires, and for a while were laying over the guy wire of WOWT cause the top of the tower to bend. WOWT has removed their HDTV antenna and they are still determining if it is going to be necessary to disassemble and rebuild that tower.

[Rebelbase]

"A Diplomatic insertion"

WRONG THREAD. Keep Kobe defense theories on the other threads, please!

[norraad]

Oh, geez,

still determining,

it can't fall down twice, just iron out the krinkles & put it back up!