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Upgrade also of a few steps your security level. Climbing on a tower is dangerous, sometimes fatal, if you don't know what you are doing. So, to prevent useless injuries, check with the manufacturer if the structure of your tower, the hinged bases, the flat root mounts, etc, are intended to support the weight of a man (at least 100 kg). Otherwise I don't see many solutions to climb on top of your tower to install the antenna... excepting using a crane equipped with a platform.
Tools and accessories Like all mechanical job, tower work requires a proper technique and dedicated tools. Among these last you will need of an helmet, screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches,... without to forget the essential bolts and nuts. Add some clothings like the welcome leather gloves very useful to protect your hands while handling the tubings and the rope and to warm your hands at winter time, an old denim (jeans), a light sleeve jacket with several pockets but allowing you to move freely, and shoes offering a very hard sole with a deep pattern like any good range boots. You can also use work shoes with steel inserts in the soles or even military "combat shoes". For your safety it is of the uttermost importance that you borrow or buy a safety belt. This is in fact a generic term that we must divide in 2 elements : first, the leather belt, at least 5 cm wide or 2", which length is adjustable to the perimeter of the tower like an ordinary belt. It is independent of the security hardness (but has to be attached on it). Then you need either of a strap snap or a safety belt with seat harness that you will attach around your waist. This is a 10 cm wide (4") belt including a leather belt and some fasteners to attach various steel loops or tools.
These items come in various designs including the full body harness crossed on your chest and in your back. For your information a safety belt with seat harness cost about $100. Take also some useful accessories like two steel loops (D-ring) for the harness or the strap snap, several gorilla hooks or lanyards 90 cm long (3 ft), one or more solid buckets to transport little tools or larger accessories on up the tower (no more than 10 liters or 3 gallons), etc. To put together the various sections of a tower three more accessories must enter in your collection of the most useful tools : - a pulley equipped with a ring and encasted in wood or metal to prevent the rope to jump out of the wheel. It will be attached on top of the gin pole (see below) or any convenient hook to lift heavy load on the tower. - a manila hemp rope. Twice as longer as the height of your tower, it is used with the pulley. Always select the rope offering the highest resistance, and the larger supporting the strongest strenght. A diameter of about 2 cm or 0.8" will make the job. - a gin pole. This is a special metallic pipe of about 4m long (13') on which is attached a sliding clamping device, a means to tight it, and a pulley on top. When the tower and antenna are installed manually, without assistance of a crane, it is used to lift the different sections of the tower and the antenna mast in order to assemble them without difficulties. We will develop a bit longer this subject below. This is practically all the tools and accessories that you need to assemble a tower and an antenna. As you see this is not hard to gather. If you do this job for the first time and maybe the last one too, I suggest you to borrow the climbing equipment and hardware to your radio club or even to a climbing or scout association. One of his member has maybe still this material under the dust of his workshop. Before using them check that the pully, thr rope, the gin pole, security belts, steel loops and snap-links are in good state. At the least suspicious remove the damaged part and replace the unit. How work all this stuff ? It's so easy that even a kid might use such equipment ! Before climbing attach your strap snap or your harness around your waist and attach a D-rings at each hip, the rounded side to the outside. If you use a full body harness don't forget to insert in the front harness the loop that will attach you to the tower.
Strapped this way your first feeling will be to get entraved in your movements but after a while you will appreciate this security that will give you in fact all freedom of movement. Your safety belt will allow you to move safely around the tower, the feet leaned or not against the rungs. The strap or the harness will provide you also a large and sturdy surface against which you can lean with all your force when lifting and moving heavy pieces of material. But working on a tower do always think that you are not at ground level and that if you lose a tool, it will transform in projectile of a few kilograms falling at 60 km/h (40 mph) on the people underneath..., hence the utility of the helmet, also useful to prevent your head to knock on the tower rungs. The gin pole As introduced above, the gin pole is an handy device, made of a tubing, a sliding and clamping mechanism, a fixing system and a pulley attached on top. It is an essential tool when assembling manually a tower over the ground in using itself as support to lift the higher segments. Placed on top of the last section, it helps you to lift easily one tower section after another or any piece of material on the tower in pulling simply on the rope linked to the pulley. The gin pole is of course useless (or almost) if you assemble the tower horizontally and erect it in position in pulling at 15-20 people on ropes.
Or a long telescopic pole (made of fiber glass or aluminium from 50 to 70 mm of diameter at the base and over 25 mm on top) could do the trick if it is very long, very wide and sturdy. Avoid in all case a pole made of wood. If the pole is your sole alternative, drive a small hole 30 cm dept (1 ft) in the ground and place the base of the pole inside. Then attach the pole with guy wires and one third, two-third and on top where you will also attach the steel pulley with its rope or steel wire. Check the security of the system in lifting a bag of sand of about 30 kg (60 lbs.) and let it hanged a few minutes. If it carries the load several times, go ahead, your system is safe. But for more security your gin pole should be made of a steel tube 40 mm of diameter or larger or of an unique length of aluminium tubing of at least 50 mm in diameter (or square section) and at least 2 mm thick, the larger the best to prevent it bends under the load. Indeed, remember well that if you cannot manually bend a gin pole made of aluminium tubing using your own strength, a few meters high, under the stress of a heavy load, a light tube showing a too small section can be at the limit of its resistance. Suddenly, without warning, it can bend and release or let drop the tower section that can hurt one of you if you cannot manage the situation. So take great care in selecting the quality of your gin pole and its fixings. Let's your friends be aware of this potential problem and of all the risks that they incur in doing the job themselves too. At last, if you can't find any gin pole or any other mean to lift your tower sections, if the assembling of your tower horizontally on the ground is not in your plans, you will have to call the services of ironworkers and of a crane, using a plaform attached to the shaft to assemble your tower, and behind it of a good gardener ! Next chapter The guy wires and the guy anchor
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