Somebody's Gotta Do It

Pretty cool, but seen before on CR4.

A fairly simple motor/pulley/cable scheme might be a considerable improvement.

I've wondered if a thick optical fibre bundle to pipe the light up there from a source at the base of the tower might be to some advantage. These strobe lamp assemblies are somewhat complex and the lamps themselves have fairly limited lifespans. Some of these are dual assemblies to change the color to red at night and some have a single lamp with a motorized red cylindrical filter that is positioned over the lamp at night (I've seen some where the filter melted to the bulb and the whole mechanism had to be removed and replaced).

They're also susceptible to lightning in spite of the lightning protection struts you see bridging the top and sides. A stroke creates a big current pulse down the tower proper and it can inductively couple into the cables feeding these beacons and fry whatever they're wired to. Optical fibre, OTOH, would be unaffected. Not only, but there would be no need to send someone up there and the danger inherent in that - especially for someone on that monopole.

Just my two pesos' worth.

A buddy of mine still has the KRDK-TV mast that fell down in 1997 is his scrap yard still as heavy iron. I actually helped cut it up after a ice storm took it down.

The base legs of the tower was something like 8" solid steel so I learned how to torch heavy steel real well that week! Also learned to drive dozer too pulling all that heavy metal and guy cabling into locations where we could get the salvage trucks into.

Also that building that is in the one picture, the whole one side where that big garage door is shown was smashed flat from part of the tower falling on it.

Four inches of ice on the structure? Good lord. No wonder it collapsed.

I remember seeing news of this collapse on TV, just not via KXJB Channel 4 Fargo.

It seems like something went wrong, as he was cussing. I wonder what he gets paid. I've considered a front porch on my airship design for such work, but if any breeze swings the ship around, things could go wrong. Sure would be a good way to make quick money, as long as the bulb is easy to replace.

It is. The xenon bulbs such as the one here are typically mounted in a Pyrex chimney and plug into a three-pin socket.

Park the airship higher up and lower yourself down in a harness. Just make sure a HAL-9000 isn't at the wheel meanwhile:

The dad of a girl I went to highschool with did that sort of work in the 1980's. he got something like $75 for re lamping a tall tower like that which took around half a day.

So given that I would doubt this guy makes much over $35 -$40 an hour now. It's not difficult work. Just unusual.

Probably less. About $35-50k/year for tower work, according to this:

http://www.jobshadow.com/interview-with-a-tower-climber/

Seems pretty reasonable.

Surely this is an appropriate task for a drone these days?

It's coming to that, but even better if weren't necessary to replace anything. Pipe the light up there with optical fibre.

Damn, the elevator's broke.

I'm surprised (and shocked) at the configuration of the ladder rungs for the final leg of the climb. I found myself holding my breath as I watched.

I saw good practice in use of fall protection, maintaining two hooks, however the clip-off points appear incompetent in event of mis-hap and could easily lose the hook. One would think a closed ring or stirrup would be used for a positive clip engagement. Especially in SD where I'm sure maintenance cannot wait for sunny/calm days like the beautiful weather in this video.

Seeing goPro footage of this climb I kinda expected a BASE jump to round off this video...shucks :S

(Key piece of PPE = parachute)

hhplg :p

Ikr? Those nailhead rungs don't exactly give one the Warm Fuzzies.

I thought base jumping would an awesome way to exit, too. Small world.

Even with 100% tie-off on the nailhead rungs, the pucker factor must be about a 12!

Rumor has it that that's how they crimp the wires.