Longline comms tower construction. Hardest thing I've ever done. Any clues?
Last week I had to fly on a communication tower construction job. It was a 30 meter guyed tower. Three 10 meter sections. The first pilot put up the first 20 meters and never having tried anything like it before, I did the top 10.
First I attempted it on a short line, trying to hold position reference things on the ground and following instructions from the riggers who were up the tower attempting to bolt it together as I swung it past them. That didn't work, they sounded really scared over the two-way as well.
Next I tried it on a 20 meter long line and managed to place the top section reasonably accurately on the tower. Trouble was that because the bolts were only 2 inches long and the Huey had a bit of a bounce and the wind was gusting a bit, after about 10 minutes of neck crinking and highly excited blasphemy from the riggers we decide to give that a miss as well. Any time I tried to sit the section down the tension came off the line and it would lean away and threaten to slide off. Pick it up to rectify that just meant I had to start all over again.
We did get it the next day. The wind was fairly calm and we strapped a 3 meter coppers log up the guts of the section we were trying to put up which slid into the top of the existing tower and held it mostly upright so the riggers could bolt it all together. Then when it was secure they unfastened the sling from the tower and fastened it to the coppers log which I lifted up through the centre of the now mantled (opposite of dismantled?) tower.
That worked and everybody was happy.
My question is, how do you guys who do this all the time get it done without killing someone? There must be some trick of the trade I don't know about. I saw photos of a Mil 8 building a very tall tower near Mt Barker in WA a few years ago. How the hell do you do that?
Last edited by Lowlevldevl; 24th May 2009 at 02:42.