So this is a 'pre-monday' posting, all the stuff we did last Friday. Ward and Adam and George came up to help me raise the gin pole. We guyed it only at the end - I thought hard about doing it at the middle (Where the coupler is) but kind of wanted to try without it and see how the coupler/tubing held up.
This is what we came up with to attach guy wires to the ends of the model A differential/drive shafts which are buried as dead men.
We used the bottom 10' of tower as a 'gin pole' to raise the jin pole. The pole is 37' long so the forces here are pretty extreme raising it this way. I figure it's a good preliminary test, if this fails then the tower will surely be problematic.
The end of the gin pole will be guyed to the tower in 3 places and we need to attach a turn buckle for each guy wire on the gin pole.
This is the coupler in the middle of the gin pole. It's squeezed tightly around the tubes with 3/8" grade 5 bolts and tack welded in a few places.
Adam pulling it up with his come-along winch.
Up she goes - George keeps an eye on the tension of the guy wires. These actually loosen a bit as the gin pole goes up, on the tower they'll tighten as it goes up.
It went up very smoothly and there was never any noticable sag or bend in the tubing - it stayed perfectly straight which is good news so far. If it goes up, the tower will be twice as high.
I got the cable attached to the winch and about 7 wraps on the spool.
This is where the cable we pull it up with is anchored. It goes from here, over a pully on the gin pole and then to the winch. Overall its right about 100' of cable the winch will need to take up in order to raise the tower.
The top of the gin pole. So... today we'll assemble the rest of the tower, run out the guy wires and see what happens!
