Come for a climb up THIS tower

[VK2GOM]

This guy is either brave, stupid, or a bit of both.



73 - Rob VK2GOM / GW0MOH

[VK2AVR]

that light globe isn't gonna change itself!

tower climbing isn't risky or stupid as long as you use the proper technique (3 points of connection to the tower at all times, unless you tie on using the safety line). I believe some companies mandate having a safety line on at all times, so you have 2 safety lines and every step or two you undo the lowest one and then put it on above the other one.. take another step or two and rinse, repeat. However this makes the climb exceptionally slow, impractical for a tower as high as the one in the video. You can't mitigate all risk in life, it's a case of managing it sensibly.

You have to be quite fit, and for the tower in the video very fit! Having the confidence to do the climb is also vital.. I'm not really that good with heights so even a 10 metre tower climb gets my legs shaking. Funny enough I have no problem climbing trees, I think I feel more secure having rough grippy branches.. towers with smooth slippery metal are quite unsettling.

[VK2GOM]

I have a tower climber (ham) friend back in the UK, who has been up some really big UK masts and towers. He tells me free-climbing there is classed as stupid, and banned, and will lose you your job instantly. You are attached at all times.

That aside, he's got some great pictures from the top of some of them!

73 - Rob VK2GOM / GW0MOH

[VK2FAK]

Hi all...

My legs start to shake when climbing a ladder to the house guttering...single level about 15'..

I wonder if the helmet is just incase someone drops a Tool....it sure ain't going to help if he falls off.

John

[VK3HY]

Scary......my bottom is still twitching.

de VK3HY

[VK3DXE]

Hi all...

My legs start to shake when climbing a ladder to the house guttering...single level about 15'..

I wonder if the helmet is just in case someone drops a Tool....it sure ain't going to help if he falls off.

John

That's correct.

Scary......my bottom is still twitching.

de VK3HY

That sounds like what is known as a pucker moment

[VK7DB]

Why not use a helicopter?

[VK2TS]

Only the Yanks lack of OH&S standards would allow one to climb up ladder pegs made of threaded rod which incidentally looked affected by corrosion

[VK5ZD]

I think this video has been posted before...
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=10663

[VK2AAH]

[quote="VK2MIA"]that light globe isn't gonna change itself!

tower climbing isn't risky or stupid as long as you use the proper technique (3 points of connection to the tower at all times, unless you tie on using the safety line). quote]

Insurance premiums suggest otherwise... there is always an element of risk when working at heights no matter how safely the person works. However I agree that the insurance premiums are influenced by riggers that don't follow safe procedures & make life harder for those who do. Sometimes I think the paperwork just to get approval to work at heights is as painful as some falls!

Cheers


Richard
VK2AAH

[VK3ZAZ]

I have had a 100 foot tower at Wannon since 1992
Hauled up TH5 402BA and 9 el 6M beams
10M 5 el using rope pulley,
Tail twister rotors and wire arrays.
using safe climbing and harness work aloft is fine.
Straight climbs make you fit.
Im not a rigger.
I have had supervised climbs to 57 Metres at Mt Dundas.
I take all due care and its only this year at 65 yo I finally relented and sold the tower off.

The benefits of yagis at 37m and 40m is awesome.

My current tower is a 75 foot comet
has climbing spikes up corner they are fine and you are always against the tower not hanging out.

3HA 242 feet has climbing spikes and I have been up to middle level to change lights.
You can't use lap safe it would burn your nuts off as you went up.

Safe tower climbing is essential work.

or go tilt over if you fear heights.
HOWEVER
Nallys 13M high using 3 el yagis and the AUS 1KW permit
You need another 10M to be legal and reduce the public exposure level to safe limits.


As for insurance point of is???

Ive flown privately for 30 years cant have life insurance due risk have logged 5000 hours and never had a forced landing.
I saved $30,000 in premiums by being denied and I am still alive..

[VK2GOM]

I think this video has been posted before...
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=10663

You're right - so it has. But this post is better!

1. It has had more responses.
2. The video is embedded so you can watch it within the VKLogger forum.

73 - Rob VK2GOM / GW0MOH

[VK2AAH]

Now that you have beaten your chest Steve & shown what a he man you are...

Read the comment I referred to... the cost of rigging services has been increasing significantly over the past decade or so because of ever increasing risk management regulations, be it insurance, stricter OH&S compliance and so on. In Australia the guys who change these lightbulbs cost site owners a lot of money... in fact I've found top riggers charge more than some of the highest paid consultants! There is a significant risk in doing this work and just because you do your own rigging doesn't change that.

Cheers,


Richard
VK2AAH

[VK4BG]

Gee Steve..with that flying experience ( 5000 hours in under 30 years...average 166 hours per year ), you must have flown the Mk1 Bic...how did she handle ?

73
Glenn
VK4BG

[VK2AAH]

Could I also add that what some people regard as "safe", many would regard as "foolhardy". Back in the early-mid 90s I was instructed to climb 100ft up the EPT tower at Cabramurra to take AGC measurements at the back of the MITEC dish... the fact the dish was on the other side of the tower from the climbing device didn't seem to matter, or the fact that I'm a tech & not a trained rigger. I refused. So they found someone else to do it.

Another example of "safe" rigging. I had a condemned tower to pull down. I instructed the riggers NOT to climb it. I was ignored because the rigger wanted to save on the cost of the crane. Finally he realised he needed the crane but he had no way to attach the harness for the hook- so he climbed 60ft up to attach the harness despite my instruction. When the tower came down it snapped in 3 places (totally rusted out & full of water) and the rigger looked at me and said "man, that was close!"

Just because some things have been done a certain way for decades doesn't make them right, or safe. It is nothing more than gambling that your number isn't going to come up this time. There are rules, there are procedures, and the good/smart riggers follow them. It is all about risk, because rigging is inherently risky but all risks can be managed.

Cheers,

Richard
VK2AAH

[VK2XSO]

tower climbing isn't risky or stupid as long as you use the proper technique (3 points of connection to the tower at all times, unless you tie on using the safety line). I believe some companies mandate having a safety line on at all times, so you have 2 safety lines and every step or two you undo the lowest one and then put it on above the other one.. take another step or two and rinse, repeat. However this makes the climb exceptionally slow, impractical for a tower as high as the one in the video. You can't mitigate all risk in life, it's a case of managing it sensibly.

You have to be quite fit, and for the tower in the video very fit! Having the confidence to do the climb is also vital.. I'm not really that good with heights so even a 10 metre tower climb gets my legs shaking. Funny enough I have no problem climbing trees, I think I feel more secure having rough grippy branches.. towers with smooth slippery metal are quite unsettling.

Having just renewed my climbing ticket for another year yesterday I can shed some light on this subject.
Obviously a company and it's employees have responsibilities and liabilities to each other. This is covered under general work place laws like any other occupation.
A company isn't going to use riggers without a specific level of training.

What each company puts into practise is it's own business, but just because you see a video like this does not mean that it either applies to Australian regulation or even a single company or individual.

As an example, if that was me in the video, I would have already been sacked by my employer (Telstra) because it would not comply with our internal company policy. They take OH&S very strictly.
"3 points of connection" is not one of our policies. Actually, it is, but it is for using ladders less than 2m tall. For anything over that our policy is 100% attachment. No if's or but's.
And there's no tricking our instructors. I tried a trick question on them yesterday where I knew my equipment was not going to work in a specific situation. The solution was a simple and easily workable one.

While we don't have towers as tall as the one in the video. The highest I've been up is a 100m tower. What we do is not dangerous. It is risky, but that risk is a managed risk.
And very well managed too. In some cases we do not even climb a tower and it is either not permitted or we could refuse to climb it. Spangled masts are one that we don't climb in NSW.
But the rules are apparently different for our guys in Queensland. So even internal to the same company and intestate there can be differences.
We don't climb spangled masts because we deem them too risky. We hire a cherry picker which is much safer. It might cost the company a few extra dollars but the company obviously saves money in the long run on liability and insurance.

I would be confident in saying that if I had to change the light bulb on that tower, then I would not have an issue. Though the climb would look a lot different than in that video.
We would have staged ropes for the climb and it would take several hours. It would be much longer and harder than free climbing, but a lot safer. There is no risk of a fall.
The problem is on of what happens if a climber slips at say the 800ft mark. You have to get him down and you have to do it safely and quickly.
A helicopter rescue would be more dangerous than a rope decent.
And that's what it's really about. If something does go wrong, how are you going to fix it ?


I have used a helicopter to get on and off a tower before. We had a tower in a remote location. The tower was only about 15m tall but it was a long walk in to carry a spectrum analyser, so we flew in.
The helicopter hovered up beside the top of the tower and we had to carefully climb off and on. It's much more difficult than it looks and at altitude in a prevailing wind it would be extremely difficult and much more risky.

Clip hooks (commonly called Edward Scissor Hands) are a standard way to climb a structure if there isn't some other sort of safety line.
If it were a big job you would find that the first guy up uses clip hooks and then all the other guys that follow him can use a zip line.
On a big structure like that tower you will find that they probably have wire fall arrest systems. They're easy to use and I like them. You will often see them on ladders on optus towers.
Your traveller locks on and you can climb a 50m tower faster than your lungs can compensate.

So for a big tower like that most of the climb would be on travellers are there would be very little risk of any sort of fall.
Once outside the top of the structure we would be using the clip hooks to stay attached.

One thing I've never seen anybody carry is a parachute. The biggest issue would be being blown onto the tower or into the guys.
But not withstanding that, I think of my emergency reserve chute I use on my hang glider. It's small and something that's easy to carry.
I wouldn't trust it below 300ft, but I know of cases where they have been used as low as 100ft.
Scary.

[VK2GOM]

Interesting info Ash...

And hopefully it never comes to anything like this in this country, but this is when things go very wrong...



73 - Rob VK2GOM / GW0MOH

[VK2XSO]

I would think that kind of thing wouldn't happen in this country. I have seen it happen in East Timor. The TV tower in Dili, a free standing tower not much different from the ch7 TV tower. About 120m tall fell down in "a cyclone". Well, not really a cyclone because they don't occur on the north side of Timor. I prefer a bit more honesty and I would call it, "A light breeze".

The reason why it fell down was not obvious to me at the time. We subcontracted riggers to do climbing work on towers because they deemed it to risky if they had to evac our own guys.
We were putting in a microwave link at a place called Baccau. There was a similar free standing TV tower at one end and a 50m freestanding microwave tower at the other.
The microwave tower I watched the riggers climb and I climbed up the first 5m of the ladder and I couldn't get back on the ground quick enough.
The riggers thought it was a good solid tower.

Then we went to the TV tower. They climbed up to the second level and they came down very quickly. They then refused to climb it again.
The reason was that locals had been removing bolts and other hardware from the tower. Where there was supposed to be 5 bolts holding a brace there was one. In some places they had taken the nut and left just the last bolt in place. In other places they had either removed or just not installed some of the smaller diagonal braces.
That tower's days were numbered, and I now know the real reason why the other fell down.

[VK2AVR]

Spangled masts are one that we don't climb in NSW.
But the rules are apparently different for our guys in Queensland.

Thanks for sharing, Trash.. interesting to read it from someone who works in the industry

What's a spangled mast?

Also, I have seen people base jump from these sort of towers using a parachute. The difference is, if you jump you jump outwards. If you slip and fall you go straight down and a chute isn't going to help much as it will get ripped apart by the tower on the way down. But it would be a fun way to end a day's work, and a lot better than climbing back down!!

[VK2XSO]

A spangled mast. I tried to find a picture of one but can't find one using google.
There's a lot of them still in use in Queensland.

The best description I can give is they are a large aluminium pole which is guyed vertically down three sides as if it were a tower. Not only are these guys vertical, but there are also diagonal guys
between each section and stay arms. The effect is guys act like a triangular tower section. The mast is also guyed diagonally out to the ground like any guyed tower and ladder pegs up the center pole.

The issue is that it is very difficult to rescue somebody from the mast. There are so many guys to get caught up in and not enough for two people to come down on one side.
Since I'm not trained on them, I have not seen how to they it. But from pictures I have seen it looks like they use a pulley at the top and each person comes down opposite sides of the pole and the rescuer has to change over connections as they cross each section. It's messy and slow and the rescuer has to come down with the other guy to stop him getting tangled up in all the guys.

We use as similar sort of rescue inside poles. If the first in guy has a problem when can get a pulley up past him and attach a rope to him. Then link the two guys together and they come down together that way they can keep the guy being rescued from getting body parts caught in the ladder and cables. They're also linked together because one guy is always heavier than the other and they can end up going the wrong direction.