WBFO Tower Construction

Kenny Macdonald's Field Report:

"I talked to George who seems to be running the show over there, a very interesting man who has been working in the tower construction biz for 25 years. He says the new tower is 200 feet taller than the old one.

The first 200 feet will be built using a crane…the remainder will be stacked using a movable block and tackle on a parallel, temporary tower.

The foundation is a 16-foot concrete column buried 15 feet deep and very close to the existing tower. If you didn’t know it was there, you could trip over it. It is smaller than what you are thinking; you could wrap your arms around it.

The base of the antenna comes down to a point and sits on a six inch pin on the foundation. He says the single-base construction (rather than a tri-pod) allows the tower to flex in the wind.

When I visited the crew of 6 was building the first anchor point about 100 yards away from the tower foundation.

Two sets of guy wire will be easy to place, but one set will be interlaced with the existing tower’s wire. That, he says, is the tricky part. Once the new tower is built, the old tower will come down piecemeal…no dramatic toppling or implosion…shucks.

That’s the field report."

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items are from between 04 Apr 2008 & 15 Apr 2008.