[SADXA] VE6WZ is incredibly lucky that his crankup tower accident last week wasn't fatal

[Darrel]

I copied the following from the CWOps group, where it had been posted 
from the topband at contesting.com group.

Ouch.

Cheers
     Darrel  aa7fv

> 3a. *VE6WZ is incredibly lucky that his crankup tower accident last 
> week wasn't fatal*
> From: donovanf at starpower.net 
> <mailto:donovanf at starpower.net?subject=Re:%20VE6WZ%20is%20incredibly%20lucky%20that%20his%20crankup%20tower%20accident%20last%20week%20wasn%27t%20fatal>
> Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2024 08:28:01 MST
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "VE6WZ Steve" <ve6wz at shaw.ca>
> To: "topband" <topband at contesting.com>
> Sent: Monday, September 2, 2024 7:55:08 AM
> Subject: Topband: Tower failure at VE6WZ
>
> Hello fellow DXers......
>
> VE6WZ will be QRT from the HF bands above 160m.
>
> On Tuesday Aug 27, I suffered a main lift cable failure on my crank up 
> tower that destroyed all of my Yagi's and the US tower.
> At the time of the failure, I was beside the tower (doing work) in my 
> man lift while the tower was going up.
> The tower was almost at full height (at 100') when the main lift cable 
> broke.
> About 500 pounds of Yagis came crashing down almost instantly from 
> 100'. I was in the manlift, and my reaction was to "go down" into the 
> man basket when I heard the crash. This is what saved me. The man 
> basket cage was somewhat damaged and bent.
> I am totally ok, with not a scratch, but the cage of the man basket 
> protected me.
> There was debris, bolts, brackets, tubing, pieces of the booms flying 
> everywhere, but somehow, the man lift was not knocked down. After the 
> collapse, one of the 80m Yagi elements was laying on the man basket, 
> but I was able to push it off, and lower the man lift to get out.
> The tower, my 80m-40m Yagis are completely destroyed. Unrepairable. 
> The high band Optibeam is probably repairable. 
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WPDpMbGaS1r8qgjWlj4AFyS8Gog5uSnY/view?usp=sharing 
> <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WPDpMbGaS1r8qgjWlj4AFyS8Gog5uSnY/view?usp=sharing>
>
> Why did this happen?
> It was my mistake.
> I am building a 4 element, 160m, 6 direction triangular parasitic 
> array and needed to modify the shunt feed for the US tower crankup. 
> The crankup is the driver for the parasitic elements.
> The existing shunt feed for the tower needed to me modified into a 
> symmetrical skirt surrounding the tower to maintain balanced coupling 
> to the parasitics.
> I clamped brackets to the outside of each section to support the 
> shunt-wire standoffs.
> These clamps were working well for the last 3 months, but after a high 
> wind, some of the shunt wires moved and caused the support arms to 
> bend inward.
> This bending shifted one (or more) of the brackets to bend INWARD into 
> the inner moving sections, then toward the main lift cable and 
> basically sliced the main lift cable.
> The point is, this failure was not something that would have happened 
> normally, but was only because of my poor engineering/ modifications. 
> I guess that’s why they are called accidents?
>
> I have owned the US tower crankup for 26 years, (beginning at my city 
> QTH) and have been fastidious about maintenance of the cables, sheaves 
> and motorized raising fixture, and have had trouble free use of it.
> I will miss it.
> My homebrew 80m-40m 2 el Yagis have been in service for 22 years and I 
> have had great enjoyment using them.
> On 40m I have worked DXCC Honour roll with 336 confirmed, and have 293 
> DXCC confirmed on 80m.
> I really wanted to make it to 300 DXCC on 80m, but maybe that will 
> encourage me to build an 80m vertical array?
>
> I have decided not to replace the tower. I want to simplify my remote 
> station, and looking back over the last few years, I have been almost 
> exclusively active on 160m anyway.
> It has been pretty rare to hear ve6wz above 40m, let alone on 80m for 
> the last few years.
> I plan to remove (and sell for scrap) the 2,000 lb US tower, and 
> replace it with another 90' irrigation tubing vertical to complete my 
> 4 element triangular 160m TX array.
>
> Here is a some detail about the 160m array:
>
> The driver "was" the shunt fed tower, but that (next year) will be 
> replaced with a 90' irrigation tubing vertical.
> There are 3 parasitic elements surrounding the driver (75' toploaded 
> irrigation verts) spaced at 60'.
> At any time, 3 elements are active, one parasitic tuned as a director, 
> the other as a reflector.
> The array is a variant of the classic K3LR, K9CT, VE3EJ 3 element 
> inline array, but in my case, the 3 elements are spatially "offset".
> For example, the north parasitic tuned as a director pushes forward 
> gain north, but the SW parasitic pushes the pattern NE.
> The really crazy thing, is that modelling shows the forward gain and 
> F/B to be down only .4 dB from the inline design, PLUS, I get 6 
> directions!
> To my knowledge no one has ever built an array like this.
>
> Before the tower collapse, I actually had completed the array and was 
> just finalizing the expanded radial system for the north element. 
> (another 8,000' of copper wire)
> I had done some field testing with my signal source and RX testing in 
> the field while TXing. The field test where identical to my model.
> The array shows 3.5-4dB forward gain (compared to a single vertical) 
> and about 20 dB F/B.
> My plan was to make a YouTube video (and a .pdf paper) describing the 
> array, modelling, installation and field testing, but that will now be 
> delayed until next year.
>
> Since the tower failure, I have already modified the north parasitic, 
> so it is now tuned and fed as a driver, and using the SW and SE 
> parasitics as refelctors I at least have gain to EU and JA.
> So VE6WZ I will still be QRV on 160m this winter season.
> My 9 band RBN CW skimmer is offline until I reinstall a new antenna 
> since that skimmer antenna was on the tower.
> Both of my 160m RBN skimmers are still running.
>
> That’s a long story, but I wanted to share this with the topband 
> community since the VE6WZ remote station will be taking a slightly 
> different direction.
>
> Steve, Ve6wz.
> ___