[BC] bonding AM tower sections

[Rob Atkinson]

yeah, the wire idea was brought up, but it seems to kind of defeat the 
purpose (except that you need the tower to hold the wire), unless the tower 
is uninsulated or you want to get into standing it off and making a skirt.  
if it's insulated it seems to me it would be easier to jumper the sections 
as you say, and load the tower.

rob atkinson


From: Cowboy <curt at spam-o-matic.net>
Reply-To: Broadcasters' Mailing List <broadcast at radiolists.net>
To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Subject: Re: [BC] bonding AM tower sections
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 23:45:20 -0400

On Tuesday 27 June 2006 11:46 am, Rob Atkinson wrote:
 >
 > Hi all,
 >
 > a ham, putting up a 4 tower array for 3.5 mhz, is using sections of rohn 
25
 > and is wondering if anything special has to be done to bond the sections
 > together for long term conductivity.  It seemed to me that this is an 
area
 > where you guys might have some useful advice.  Are AM tower sections 
bonded
 > in any special way (tack welding for example) or is the compression from
 > weight and standard bolting of leg flanges enough?   I'd guess the latter
 > but wanted to be sure.

  Depends on the tower.
  I've talked to Wayne directly, so I know that Magnum steel by design will 
have
  some 80 KIPS per flange, so welding *should* be unnecessary.
  Generally, we tack weld them anyway.

  For ham use, I would ( and have ) simply silver-braze a #10 jumper across
  each joint.

  Commercial towers will stand for decades. With ham equipment, that's
  not the case, so the #10 jumper allows you to simply cut the jumper
  when the structure is disassembled, or  modified for whatever reason.

  The whole idea, is to maintain electrical continuity throughout.
  You *could* run a wire ( #14 copper for instance ) the whole length,
  top to bottom, and for amateur purposes it would have continuity.
  I'd still hose clamp it at least once per section.

--
Cowboy


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