Multiple towers on the hill in Concord have collapsed from todays weather. NOAA is online , P575 is offline, capital fire is down a site just to name a few.
Plasawa Hill is Down
- Thread starter GraniteScanner
- Start date
jmfirefighter
Member
jmfirefighter
Member
Yes, that is (was) the foundation. About 10' from end end. Ripped it right out of the ground and dragged it 10 feet. Amazing power. Tore the steel mounting bracket on one of the other legs, about 3/4"-1" thick steel plate.
That should say Plausawa Hill, FYI.
Oops, this is a frequent miss spelling for me
It is honestly amazing and scary at how such a strong structure can fall like that.
I'm assuming the Pembroke 575 GMRS repeater will be down for the foreseeable future. I don't think the repeater or tower were damaged. But the power to it came from the building that had the big tower. There's no need to power it for awhile. if ever again.
It's also possible when it does come back on line, it'll be the "(Insert town name here) 575" repeater.
It's also possible when it does come back on line, it'll be the "(Insert town name here) 575" repeater.
ecps92
Member
12dbsinad
Member
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2010
- Messages
- 1,954
I've never seen a free standing tower with a block of cement for each leg. Should be one massive concrete slab underground with the pears tied to it. Unless the pears came detached and we just can't see the rest. Either way, that should NOT have happened in this relatively small scale wind storm. Scary.
cboykonh
Member
What about uniting? I know they were off that tower.
cboykonh
Member
I meant unitil spellchecker again. Sorry about that.
cboykonh
Member
NWR Transmitter Propagation I just checked NOAA and 162.40 is offline too.
Unitil was on one of the smaller towers that I think came down. I'm not sure how often they've been using their Low Band anyway. Some of their newer pickups don't have any antennas in them.
cboykonh
Member
They still use 37.58 repeater? Or don’t they use that at all? I know it’s listed as that for their frequency, so not sure if they are still using that frequency on a repeater?
I had that freq. on my desktop scanner up until recently when I re-did the code plugs to patch my portable scanners. It sill gave out an ID over Morse code but never any voice traffic from what I heard.
There are quite a few towers I've seen with this type of base. Especially larger ones. If done correctly, the tower would be just as strong.
Typically when a tower fails, it is due to one of the following:
1) Structural failure due to improper loading. AKA mounting antennas without a proper engineering load analysis to make sure it complies with ANSI/TIA-222H (The current standard), or 222G (the most recent standard). If the tower is up to this standard, it'll withstand very severe icing and wind events. (Including the most recent storm)
2) An unknown failure that was already starting, and caused significant weakening of the tower. This is usually caused by poor or no maintenance done to the tower. (Inspections, painting, etc.)
3) A tornado or derecho (Incredibly strong winds).
4) Vandalism.
cboykonh
Member
I saw one of the towers is still standing, is it possible to move the equipment that was on the collapsed tower to the still standing tower?
It was windy but nothing crazy. Mt Washington's peak speed for that storm was 150mph so not unheard of for a winter storm. I would suspect it wasn't one thing but a number of events that led to the collapse. The wind was likely the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
12dbsinad
Member
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2010
- Messages
- 1,954
The piers need to be anchored to something. If no ledge, it's a concrete slab that you won't see. When wind it applied to the structure, there is massive amounts of uplift on one side that is why the foundation is way way over engineered even with maximum tower loading. The structure should fail before the foundation. In this case, obviously there is/was a serious problem. Did the freestanding tower take out the smaller guyed tower? It's hard to tell by the pics.
Similar threads
