Documenting an 1115 ft radio tower climb

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/documenting-1115-ft-radio-tower-climb

by geerlingguy • 2 years ago

223 85 2 years ago

tylerflick• 2 years ago

He sort of touched on this, but an aspect of tower rigging that most people don’t think about is how long it can take to climb a tower when you are the first one up with the line. It’s absolutely exhausting work.

Another side fact, wasps are attracted to building nests on the towers for some reason. I never knew if it was all the EM radiation being put off or just the heat.

aetherson• 2 years ago

Almost certainly the heat.

Xenograph• 2 years ago

I don't think it's the heat, rather, the wasps seem attracted to the radio wave EM radiation. I'm not sure why, but I've seen it first hand when turning on high powered outdoor point-to-point WiFi antennas (eg. airMAX LiteBeam 5AC). The moment I connected the power, several wasps immediately began crowding around the antenna.

Q6T46nT668w6i3m• 2 years ago

I used to do this and, for me, the time it took was entirely dependent on the gear I was provided and whether the climb was enjoyable. The gear isn’t exactly what you think of when you think climbing gear and, frankly, it’s infuriating. It might be manufactured by Petzl but the weight and utility are terrible relative to their alpine and mountaineering products. Hell, I was expected to wear work boots that were extremely heavy and climbed poorly. As far as scenery, everyone, myself included, would treat these climbs as climbs and would enjoy ourselves if the views were scenic. The work itself wasn’t hard relative to the trips we were guiding during the climbing season.

jasinjames• 2 years ago

How would someone get into this work?

adriand• 2 years ago

To what extent do people in this line of work feel fear as they do it? Is it mainly suitable for those rare people who either don’t feel fear, or the less-rare people who are looking for a rush, or does it just become mundane after sufficient experience, so that really anyone can do it?

cruffle_duffle• 2 years ago

I would think in a trade like this you’d have your own climbing gear and be expected to maintain it. In many trades most of the tools are property of the workers themselves.

MrMcCall• 2 years ago

My kids and I have watched tons of documentaries over the years. One they (and I) enjoyed very much was "World's Toughest Fixes", which was hosted by a rigger named Sean Riley. In episode (s1e6) he helps a crack team of guys replace the top broadcast pole (name?) at the top of a 2000ft antennae. It's really extraordinary how they are working above the top of the actual tower to replace the old pole with the new one.

His entire series was excellent, but the episode mentioned is here:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1339028/

(Series on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Toughest_Fixes)

albert_e• 2 years ago

Cool

Rabbit Hole:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDLT_tower
Replacement of the beacon bulb at the top of the digital tower was featured in an episode of World's Toughest Fixes in 2010.[6] In 2015, amateur drone video footage of a man changing the light bulb on the analog tower went viral attracting more than 19 million views on YouTube and garnering attention from CNN and a newspaper in Britain.[7][8][9] On learning of the drone footage, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) forbade any further flights; without its approval, drones are restricted by law to a ceiling of 400 feet (120 m), far lower than the height of the tower.[10]

And the referenced viral video ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1BgzIZRfT8#t=47

geerlingguy3• 2 years ago

I remember in high school having my Dad invite me to watch the process of installing the antenna with a gin pole. A fairly risky operation that requires a ton of planning, as you're lifting literal tons of metal up the side of a guyed mast, which is designed for straight-down loads, not loads hanging off the side!

It doesn't always go well, for example the Senior Road Tower collapse.

jlarcombe3• 2 years ago

This video did the rounds many years ago now, still quite an uncomfortable watch especially when he gets to the top! I understand they don't allow 'free climbing' any more... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgO4Gd4RhvM

ddoolin• 2 years ago

This makes me physically very uncomfortable to watch. What a thrill.

isoprophlex• 2 years ago

I am afraid of heights. I had to go back halfway through going up the Eiffel tower.

Jesus fuck this video has me on edge. I don't know what moved me to click that link, haha.

These people have balls of tungsten, that's for sure.

HL33tibCe7• 2 years ago

These people presumably aren’t scared of heights, so I’m not sure we can really comment on their balls

digitalsankhara• 2 years ago

Is not the height that gets me, it is the edges!

gadders3• 2 years ago

Try watching this guys Insta videos: @alainrobertofficial

He's a French guy famous for free-soloing skyscrapers. I don't have a particular fear of heights but I nope out of some of his videos pretty quickly.

dist-epoch• 2 years ago

Also a movie, Fall:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15325794/

doubleg72• 2 years ago

Haha a lot like the flick where the guy is trapped in a phone booth for the entire movie.

defrost2• 2 years ago

I free climbed radio towers on mesa's in the Pilbara as part of work experience in high school .. bit before health and safety was a thing.

The steeplejack work of Fred Dibnah is quite a thing to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ma9iYx4rg

jlarcombe3• 2 years ago

yes indeed, and any English person of the appropriate age will have seen children's TV present John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column and then going over the edge in a bosun's chair to clean it, with no harness, utterly terrifying!

https://youtu.be/tGZ-h70IK9s

Optimal_Persona• 2 years ago

The Fred Dibnah stuff is some of the most impressive stuff I've seen, not just the scaling heights but the logistics of building the ladders as he went, and the demolition of large brick structures with a minimum of tools.

guerrilla• 2 years ago

This video was how I started to challenge my fear of heights, watching it over and over until I got desensitized, then found hundreds more similar videos and did the same, eventually getting obsessed with rock climbing movies, which taught me a lot. I haven't been able to actually climb since then due to injuries but the whole thing changed my life and made facing fears and working on myself in general a standard thing I just do now.

Check out the rooftoppers who climb cranes too btw. Beautiful views. Risky stuff.

vertego• 2 years ago

Obligatory Man On Wire reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire

Incredible and unusual documentary, not too much vertigo. It's essentially like a bank heist movie.

whatever1• 2 years ago

Nope. Just nope.

CITIZENDOT• 2 years ago

Watching Fall (2022) made me extremely wary of these kind of stunts.

geocrasher• 2 years ago

I had dismissed that movie, based on the previews, as just silly B-movie with better production. Is it actually good in the sense that the plot is plausible and the acting is decent?

microtonal• 2 years ago

It's a pretty bad movie with bad acting. I did like it for some of the height shots which can be dizzying (I had no issues with 20-30m indoor climbing walls).

phaedrus2• 2 years ago

From the article: "Some broadcast engineering tasks are a bit too daunting for me to consider. Climbing the massive towers that power radio and TV stations is one of them!"

I work for a team in a government agency that does engineering support for RF based navigational aids. Because we're short staffed (Congress underfunds us), everyone fulfills more jobs than their official title. (There's an elastic clause in government worker job descriptions, "and other duties as assigned.")

Anyway. I live in fear of the day I'm called upon to climb a tower because they need me to do that. My regular job is software development! Obviously I'm not going to do it, but I'm unsure what my rights are / what will happen if and when I refuse. Unfortunately my position isn't union protected because my older peers didn't sign on when the (non-computer science) engineers did.

sizzzzlerz• 2 years ago

Thats like being asked to fill in for the guy on the bomb squad who called in sick. Being forced to fill a role that is dangerous and for which you are untrained and unqualified sounds like grounds for a lawsuit.

alexjplant• 2 years ago

everyone fulfills more jobs than their official title. (There's an elastic clause in government worker job descriptions, "and other duties as assigned.")

That's boilerplate language for pretty much every job description in the United States (which is where I'm guessing you are). It isn't unique to government jobs. Almost everybody that doesn't work under super-strict bureaucratic oversight has to do work that isn't explicitly called out in their job description.

I live in fear of the day I'm called upon to climb a tower because they need me to do that. My regular job is software development!

Your boss isn't going to come to you saying "go climb a tower or ur fired lol" while pointing to that clause. Tower climbing requires many special considerations like training, permits, insurance, and so forth that you don't have. They will contract that work out or hire somebody to do it specifically at the appropriate rate.

my position isn't union protected

Last I checked government positions have about half the turnover that private-sector ones do. You're already doing well as far as job security (reorgs, funding SNAFUs, furloughs, etc. excepted).

I can only infer how you came to any of the conclusions that you did in your post but it sounds like you might have uninformed coworkers saying these things. If this is the case then stop listening to them.

phaedrus2• 2 years ago

It's not hearsay; I have a few engineer coworkers whose original job and training wasn't in tower climbing who now climb a couple times a year as installations require. I have seen their Powerpoint presentations, with pictures. Two of them are older and experienced in RF/telecom, but I have one younger coworker who went to a site and was asked to climb a tower and just - did it.

One older coworker is quite enthusiastic about it (as a mechanical engineer, he designed some of the custom rigging), so perhaps this is a case where he does it because he wants to & demonstrated aptitude so they let him. He actually decided to on his own to stop when a recent near miss made him question "why the hell" he isn't leaving this to professional riggers.

I don't know how/why my younger engineer coworker ended up doing it. Both her parents are in this same field and I know she feels a lot of pressure to excel and not say no to things. And when we come out to help a site there's a lot of pressure to restore service. So she may have agreed or even volunteered but not for the right reasons.

It may though be a case where no one thought to mention to me that this isn't a required thing, that some are doing it because they want to, etc. My coworkers aren't always good at realizing what new employees don't know, and I'm not good at picking up nuance.

But I definitely was "voluntold" to go out to a site and cut cables, which is a specialty technique I'm not properly trained in and would've taken place outside in the elements. (Did I mention I'm a programmer, a profession I chose in part because it takes place indoors? I also have undiagnosed/self-diagnosed dyspraxia; it would have been a disaster.) Thankfully the trip got canceled for other reasons, but my point is I wasn't asked; I was just told we need to send someone so you're going.

axegon_• 2 years ago

I'm really glad to see Geerling branching out of his initial niche coverage on everything-raspberry-pi(which I personally find a bit boring 95% of the time).

lxe• 2 years ago

You have to check out the author's other youtube videos exploring this tower in depth. Fascinating stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_u8x8V4YYs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ-XqQchwEw

remlov• 2 years ago

It blows my mind that HN post submitters don't do a simple spell check on their post titles.

curiousObject• 2 years ago

That mistake ‘an’ is in the original blog title. I assume this was posted by the blog author

A simple spellcheck won’t detect it but grammar check might.

Edit: the reason is probably that the writer is saying “eleven hundred”. It sounds OK but looks strange in writing

quesera2• 2 years ago

The "an" is correct, if you read the number as "eleven hundred and fifteen".

h_tbob• 2 years ago

I think they should make it so the stuff is on an “elevator” that can be moved up and down. For safety.

fliglr• 2 years ago

Why don't they design the towers so they can be laid down flat and fixed on the ground and then pushed back upright again?

SpaghettiCthulu• 2 years ago

Because then you need a 1115 ft stretch of flat ground to lay it on?

_2d30• 2 years ago

Then make it collapse in a spiral. Then, assuming you can make it infinitely thin, you can collapse into an arbitrarily small area.

kaikai• 2 years ago

I can’t tell if this is a serious question. Towers this size are built in place, being able to handle the strain of being lifted from horizontal would be wild. Much easier and cheaper to pay a climber.

capitainenemo• 2 years ago

Ok. Lowering a huge tower to the ground pretty silly. How about designing the array at the top as a platform that could be lowered. Too much extra weight/cost?

ozim• 2 years ago

If I think about all the things that ca go wrong with folding huge tower, sending people to climb one seems like a fair trade.

ghxst• 2 years ago

I'd assume physics are the biggest constraint here. Just look at the machinery and equipment needed to raise a falcon 9 which is "only" ~230 ft tall.

petters• 2 years ago

I climbed a 200m+ radio tower when I was a kid. Started really early so no one would see me. Saw the sunrise at the top but still felt like summer night when I got down. Best view I’ve ever seen

Documenting an 1115 ft radio tower climb

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