Excellent point for concern. I didn't include a comment that these towers were around 70 years old. Properly designed, built and maintained, this fact should have little if any difference in keeping them standing. Conversely, inadequately maintained could have resulted in them being weakened by corrosion. Incidentally, the WLW radio tower that handled the station's 500 kW transmissions and that was built in the 1030's still stand gloriously about 1 1/2 miles from my QTH. This tower literally rocks on a ball-to-ball pivot at its base and is held erect by several large guy wires. It truly is properly maintained.

Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director

ARRL Great Lakes Division

Mason, OH 45040; Tel. 513-459-1661

ARRL, The national organization for AMATEUR RADIO

This makes me nervous, because a cornerstone of our argument about setbacks in antenna cases and ordinance negotiations are that towers typically fall within a narrow radius around the base of the tower; a small percentage of their height. These towers most certainly did not do that, but that may be due to the fact that it was a three-tower DA. Not sure.

And the towers were "windmill" type, too. Not a design that one would think would collapse near the base and fall laterally.

Christopher D. Imlay
Booth, Freret, Imlay & Tepper. P.C.
14356 Cape May Road
Silver Spring, Maryland 20904-6011
(301) 384-5525 telephone
(301) 384-6384 facsimile
W3KD@ARRL.ORG

-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Johnston KI4LA <ki4la@arrl.org>
To: arrl-odv <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org>
Cc: arrl-odv <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org>
Sent: Thu, Aug 5, 2010 9:46 pm
Subject: [arrl-odv:19251] Re:

Oh my. Incredible.

Sent from Gary's iPhone 4.

On Aug 5, 2010, at 7:45 PM, "Jim Weaver K8JE" <K8JE@ARRL.org> wrote:

In case you would like to see several very ugly pictures (from the perspective of anyone involved in radio) go to
http://www.wwva.com/cc-common/gallery/display.html?album_id=244870

From, the station;s call sign and the residence of the Ohio member who sent this to me, I believe the station is located in Wheeling, WV -- Director Bodson's territory. The winds seemed to have been straight-line, but might as well have been a tornado.

Incidentally, the URL is good, but I had to cut and paste to make it work. The link appears to be broken.

73,

Jim

Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director

ARRL Great Lakes Division

5065 Bethany Rd.

Mason, OH 45040; Tel. 513-459-1661

ARRL, The national organization for AMATEUR RADIO