It is a pretty good bet that most multi-element TV aerials you
find on rooftops and even on ancient towers were decommissioned
years ago. They have been replaced either with cable
(whether via CATV or Internet)
or satellite dishes. A few hold-outs still use them for local
over-the-air broadcast stations and/or even FM radio reception.
There was a time, though, that photographs taken looking across
a vast expanse of house roofs showing an endless array of antennas
and guy wires was a sign of 'modern' living. Most were erected
by Harry Homeowner types or minimally qualified service technicians,
and were well-known for toppling, twisting, bending or un-aligning
when stiff winds were imposed upon them. This story-lesson from
the March 1953 edition "Mac's Radio Service Shop," a regular
feature in
Radio &
Television News magazine, provides a bit of analysis
on causes of failure due to improper guying and why many people's
"One
Hoss Shay" of an installation failed despite their best
efforts.
A Windy Subject
By John T. Frye

Barney stormed into the service shop in his usual going-to-a-fire
manner but stopped short as he caught sight of Mac, his employer,
sitting at the service bench toying with several soda straws.
"So!" the youth said accusingly. "You and Miss Perkins wait
until I am away to have a round of sodas sent in, eh? Of all
the sneaky, low-down, back-biting, ungrateful, penny-pinch-ing
- "
"Whoa, Buster, whoa!" Mac interrupted. "Hell apparently hath
no fury like that of a glutton who thinks he has missed out
on something to eat, but this time you are blowing your top
over nothing. These straws are not the debris of secret gorging
on the part of Matilda and myself. I was just using them for
some experimenting."
"What kind of experimenting?" Barney demanded suspiciously.
"Sunday I spent several hours driving around looking at the
damage done to TV antennas by that big wind we had Saturday
night. In several cases I saw damage that puzzled me, and I
am using these straws for model masts and towers, employing
light thread for guy wires, in an attempt to discover why the
antennas were damaged in the way they were."
"They really took a licking, didn't they?"
"Yes, but considering that some of those gusts were estimated
to hit peaks of 80 miles-an-hour, it is surprising there was
not more damage. Insurance men tell me they do not think they
will have more than one claim in every eight installations covered.
In view of the high and elaborate antenna systems that must
be used to get a signal in this ultra-fringe area, that percentage
is amazingly low."
"I think that fifty-mile-an-hour wind we had about a year
ago mussed up the signal-sniffers a lot worse."
"You're right, and it is interesting to note that the big
damage done then was to pipe-mast installations, while this
time the pipe jobs came through practically unscathed."
"Why do you suppose that was?" "The boys learned then that
just guying the top of a twenty-foot section of pipe is simply
not enough; so practically every pipe-mast is now guyed both
at the top and in the middle. This, when properly done, makes
a very sturdy job; and on top of that the pipe-masts seldom
go higher than twenty or thirty feet. Tower jobs, on the other
hand, are rarely shorter than this and often go up to better
than a hundred feet. Then, too, we are likely to rely more on
the rigidity of the tower and fail to give it the adequate guying
we would give a flexible pipe. This is all well and good in
a stiff breeze, but when the wind reaches a gale, as it did
here Saturday night, good guying becomes as important to the
tower as it does to the pipe."
"What happened to the antennas mostly?"
"A variety of things. In each case the wind hunted out the
weakest point of the installation. In many cases the guy wires
either broke or tore loose from their moorings and let the whole
business crash to the ground. In other instances a top guy broke
while the lower ones held, and then the tower usually broke
square off just above or just below the bottom guys. More common
were the cases in which the antenna masts bent over or broke
off just above the motor, or the cases in which the pipe on
which the motor was mounted suffered the same fate. Lots of
the conicals lost antenna elements, and I saw one conical in
which an insulating block had broken, allowing half of the antenna
to fall to the ground.
"Few yagis shed their elements, but a great many of them
either turned on the mast or turned the mast in the tower clamps
so that they ended up pointing the wrong way. Fellows repairing
the damage tell of a few cases in which an antenna with a large
surface in a vertical plane, supported on top of a high tower,
actually twisted the tower itself and did such a good job of
wracking the structure that practically every rivet was loosened."
"What would you say were the installation mistakes that let
all this happen?"
"Well, first, let's remember that these 'mistakes' are very
easy to spot when looking through the spectacles of hindsight,
as we are now; but before we had a chance to see what a strong
wind can do, we'd probably have made the same errors. Let's
call them 'lessons of experience' rather than mistakes.
"The first lesson is: don't try to go too high for the guying
area available. When a broadcast station puts up an antenna,
it puts it in the middle of several acres of ground so that
it can be supported as it should; but a TV owner often tries
to go nearly as high and keep all of his guy stations inside
his own small city lot. If you ever helped raise a tower, you
know that when you are standing close to the base with a guy,
you have a heck of a time holding the tower upright in even
a slight breeze; but if you back off so the guy makes about
a 45 degree angle with the tower, you can hold it easily with
one hand. When guys must be anchored close to the base, they
are subjected to terrific strain, and a large part of their
strength is wasted in a force that tries to telescope the tower
endways.
"Another fault lies in locating the guys 'conveniently' rather
than where they should be. 'Make it easier to mow,' 'Make 'em
less conspicuous,' and 'Want to keep 'em all on the house' are
some of the excuses given for failing to support the tower equally
in all directions, and this invariably leads to trouble. Not
guying often enough is another error. When the tower manufacturer
recommends guying every thirty feet, he means just that; and
if you go over thirty feet, he means that you should use two
sets of guys even if you do not go on up to sixty feet. I can
show you with these straws that if you fail to do this, a big
antenna can exert a leverage against the restraint of guy wires
affixed only to the top and make the tower buckle in the middle.
"Improper anchoring of guys is another common weakness. Antenna
towers are usually put up on calm days, and it is hard to imagine
then the tugging, yanking strain that will be placed on those
guys by a gusty windstorm. Spike nails are certainly not adequate
guy-wire anchors, and ordinary lag-screws through the sheeting
is little better, for water seeps down around the threads and
rots the wood, allowing the screw to pull out. Unless you can
drive creosote-covered lag-screws several inches into dry, seasoned
wood, it is best to use long eye-bolts that pass through both
the edge of the roof and the protective sheeting beneath the
rafters - or if the rafter-ends are not boxed in, you can use
a board nailed across a couple of them.
"Don't fasten all the guys from one corner of the tower to
a single anchor of this sort. That piles up the strain on it,
and if it does go, the whole tower is left unsupported and is
certain to fall. Use a separate anchor for each guy. A stake
- either iron or wood - driven into the ground is a poor anchor.
When the ground is softened by rains or thawing, a surprisingly
long rod can be pulled out easily. Either a pipe set in concrete
should be used, or a 'dead man' with a large surface area and
considerable weight should be buried in a deep hole and a chain,
rod, or heavy cable led from it to the surface for fastening
to the guys."
"You ought to keep the guys real tight, I suppose."
"Not too tight. While there should not be enough slack to
let the tower lunge back and forth, if they are made too tight,
especially in warm weather, the shortening with cold weather
will put unnecessary strain on them and their insulators. Incidentally,
of course, you should never use anything but strain insulators
of the type that can break without destroying the support of
the guy wire. A few owner-erected towers came down because of
this obvious mistake. A few cents expended on cable-clamps for
fastening the ends of the guy-wires is also very cheap insurance.
"Another storm-taught lesson is that the required height
should be secured with the tower alone, and the mast should
be just long enough to mount the antennas and support them a
short distance above the top of the tower. Antenna masts that
were too long, that were too thin or made of material with insufficient
strength, and that had too much high-wind-resistance antenna
stacked on them never had a chance. If a fellow wants to use
a half-dozen different antennas, he had better put them on two
or more separate masts instead of trying to stack them all on
the same one."
"How do the insurance companies feel about the situation?"
"Naturally, they are not too happy.
Most damaged antennas were covered by the 'extended coverage'
clauses on either the property or the household goods policies;
but there were exceptions to this. For example, all antennas
erected on mercantile buildings and many on apartment buildings
were not covered in this manner but required separate policies.
The only safe thing to do is to check with your insurance agent
just as soon as the antenna is erected. One installer I know
never leaves a new antenna installation without first impressing
on the owner that he should get in touch with his agent at once
and find out if the structure is insured.
"If there is a single weak spot in an antenna installation,"
Mac reflected, "a high wind will certainly find it out; so the
only thing to do is try to make the job like the fabled
One Hoss Shay: without any weaknesses. The tower should
be strong enough to support easily the antenna used, and it
should be adequately and intelligently guyed. The guy wire used
should be of the best, and it should be fastened to anchors
that will take more than a breaking pull on the wire. Compression
type insulators and cable clamps at all guy wire ends are a
must. If a motor is used, it should be mounted on a pipe with
a two-inch outside diameter; and this pipe - or the bottom of
the mast if a motor is not used - should be fastened in the
tower so that it cannot turn. The clamping action of the tower
hooks is not enough but should be aided by a strong bolt passing
through the pipe and clamped to one of the hooks.
"The mast should not be any longer than necessary, and antennas
with large wind areas or considerable weight should be mounted
as near the bottom of the mast as feasible. Wind-resistance
of particular antennas should be considered when choosing a
mast."
"Sounds to me like the ideal antenna installer ought to be
the kind of guy who wears both a belt and suspenders: one who
takes absolutely no chances!" was Barney's grinning comment.
Posted May 5, 2015
Mac's Radio Service Shop Episodes on RF Cafe
This series of instructive stories was the brainchild of none other than John T.
Frye, creator of the Carl and Jerry series that ran in
Popular Electronics for many years. Mac's Radio Service Shop began life
in Radio & Television News
magazine (which itself started as simply Radio News), and then changed
its name to Mac's Service Shop after the magazine became
Electronics
World. "Mac" is electronics repair shop owner Mac McGregor, and Barney
Jameson his his eager, if not somewhat naive, technician assistant. "Lessons" are
taught in story format with dialogs between Mac and Barney.