Cardinal Pilot Flying Pipeline - Crashed

Man...that's sad! RIP :(
 
Come to think of it, I have never seen a cell tower with guy wires. No mention yet of how tall the tower is.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Come to think of it, I don't normally see guy wires on most cell towers.
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Maybe the story is mistaken about the type of tower. Towers devoted to cell are usually less than 200' tall. Many are as short at 50'. I don't recall ever hearing about a crash into a cell tower.
 
The Hoyt tower east to Denver is 1995 ft agl. The tower has lights but the guy wires don't. Absolutely miraculous that no one's tangled with one of them yet.
 
The Canadian Prairies have numerous guyed cell towers, some of them 300 feet tall. Scud runners have run into them.
 
The sad story was in the 'local' news yesterday. Some of our Midland/Odessa members may know him.

PS I am looking out the window at a 500' guyed cell tower.
Well, how do you decide what kind of tower to call it, if it has a variety of antennae on it? This one is definitely providing cell signal. Huge guywires.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
The sad story was in the 'local' news yesterday. Some of our Midland/Odessa members may know him.

PS I am looking out the window at a 500' guyed cell tower.
Well, how do you decide what kind of tower to call it, if it has a variety of antennae on it? This one is definitely providing cell signal. Huge guywires.
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True, I've seen several radio towers which also have cell phone arrays on them as well, but I normally just see non-guyed cell-only towers.
 
There's an 800' cell tower west of KTKI that has guy wires
 
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RIP.

Yeah i stay well away from anything more than 1-200' agl as it most likely has guy wires.

wish they had/would put wire balls on them so you can see where the wires are.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
PS I am looking out the window at a 500' guyed cell tower.
Well, how do you decide what kind of tower to call it, if it has a variety of antennae on it? This one is definitely providing cell signal. Huge guywires.
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You assume EVERY tower has guywires on it, that's how, and steer clear. :yesnod: :biggrin:
 
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mscard88 said:
You assume EVERY tower has guywires on it, that's how, and steer clear.
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You misread that part of my post; it was about whether a tower is called a 'cell' tower or other ie 'radio' tower.
Of course, we all steer clear of known towers.
 
I used to be a regional operations manager for a company that built and rented out space on cell towers. We had more guyed towers than non-guyed ones because the guyed towers could generally support a larger load. In general non-guyed towers were used where we couldn't get enough land for a guyed tower or local ordances or land lease rates prevented using the guyed towers.

I found it fascinating that guyed towers always folded up and fell within the outer guy anchor points but non-guyed towers tended to fall fairly intact and could hit anything within their length. We did only have a handful that fell on their own but there was a period where we took down quite a few that didn't earn their keep or that had deteriorated to the point where it wasn't economically be feasible to repair them.

Best to assume all towers are guyed and stay at least as far away from the tower as it is tall. You won't see the wires until it's too late if you're going towards it.

Gary
 
Small airport near me has two 1020 ft. towers 1/2 mile N of the approach end of a runway.
Back in the late 80's, the guy wires caught two planes, one at night, and one trying to land in fog.

City wanted it closed, and in the end was purchased by someone who made it his personal airport. It reopened to the public several years ago, but it is still just a sleepy place.

The 1132-ft WTTV tower caught one several years ago, as well. It was removed a couple of years ago, I believe. It was the tallest structure in Indiana.
 
FlyingElvii said:
The 1132-ft WTTV tower caught one several years ago, as well. It was removed a couple of years ago, I believe. It was the tallest structure in Indiana.
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Wow...that's very surprising to me. There are three 2000' towers within 20 miles to the SW of my home base, another one about 15 mi to the north, and six more within 20 mi west of me. I've flown past many other 2000'ers. I figured they were common everywhere.
 
murphey said:
The Hoyt tower east to Denver is 1995 ft agl. The tower has lights but the guy wires don't. Absolutely miraculous that no one's tangled with one of them yet.
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We have a 2003 footer North North west of the airport closest to my house. about 10 miles from the air port.
 
Jim_R said:
Wow...that's very surprising to me. There are three 2000' towers within 20 miles to the SW of my home base, another one about 15 mi to the north, and six more within 20 mi west of me. I've flown past many other 2000'ers. I figured they were common everywhere.
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There's nothing close to that where I am in the west.
First time I realised there were towers that tall was many years ago on my first flight to OSH. We were VFR in a Cherokee somewhere over Minnesota flying along at roughly 2000 AGL when I noticed the strobes on a pair of towers a couple of miles off my wing seemed about the same height we were. Checking the chart was quite a revelation for us. I've never flown over the flatlands of the mid-west that low ever again.
 
There's one just south of MGM airport around 2500' msl, and elevation at the airport is something like 220'. They're everywhere, y'all be careful now ya heah?!
 
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About 30 miles from the house I grew up in. Big tower on a ridge. The guy lines are 1" to 1.5" diameter.

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Tulsa has 3 of them SSE of TUL around 1500'-1800' AGL (around 2,500' MSL). Still gives me an uncomfortable feeling being several miles out at 500' above, simply because it still looks like you're right next to them due to parallax.

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OKC has a rats nest of them east of KPWA.

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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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ok what physically can happen when you hit a cable?
-cable can break, you continue on (less likely)
-cable 'wins'; cuts vital structure off a/c ie tail parts/wing, down you go
-cable flexes as you strike it, slowing you enough to stall a wing +/- inducing significant yaw, down you go maybe in a spin
-cable directly incapacitates pilot regardless of a/c damage
 
I hate those towers NE of OKC. We usually fly right by them on our way to Wiley Post for a fuel stop. I never get comfortable being in the same zip code with those monsters!
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
ok what physically can happen when you hit a cable?
-cable can break, you continue on (less likely)
-cable 'wins'; cuts vital structure off a/c ie tail parts/wing, down you go
-cable flexes as you strike it, slowing you enough to stall a wing +/- inducing significant yaw, down you go maybe in a spin
-cable directly incapacitates pilot regardless of a/c damage
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Those cables are likely about as big around as a man's forearm. You ain't gonna break one with an airplane.
 
I've posted this before, but KLRO, Mt. Pleasant, SC has two 2000 footers about 5NM NE that blend into the sea when you are approaching them. No red/white paint, just white strobes and a real bear to see.
 
GRG55 said:
There's nothing close to that where I am in the west.
First time I realised there were towers that tall was many years ago on my first flight to OSH. We were VFR in a Cherokee somewhere over Minnesota flying along at roughly 2000 AGL when I noticed the strobes on a pair of towers a couple of miles off my wing seemed about the same height we were. Checking the chart was quite a revelation for us. I've never flown over the flatlands of the mid-west that low ever again.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVLY-TV_mast

Until the Burj Khalifa/Burj Dubai topped out, the tallest man made structure in the world was probably one of the towers you saw. 2063' AGL. A 2060' tower is nearby as well. They look imposing from the ground because, by the time you are close enough to see the narrow towers, you really have to crane your neck to see the top. Flat ground definitely doesn't preclude CFIT if you count stupidly tall radio masts as terrain.
 
Interesting. I thought there were laws restricting construction height in the US to 2000' or less AGL. Guess there's some leeway there.
 
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This is off of my home airport on the East Coast. I use them as landmarks but give them plenty of respect/distance.

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Jim_R said:
Interesting. I thought there were laws restricting construction height in the US to 2000' or less AGL. Guess there's some leeway there.
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This is mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the KVLY-TV mast. After it was built, the FCC and FAA evidently wrote a new policy with a rebuttable presumption against anything taller than 2000'. The link to the actual policy is, of course, broken, and the Wikipedia article does not explain what is actually presumed or what is required to rebut it. But at any rate, I now know why nobody's built anything taller and why 2,000' is such a popular height.
 
I took a photo of some of some of the 2000'ers as I was passing by one day, too, but it was a different perspective than yours, Greenhead.
Antenna tops.jpg
 
Norman said:
Those cables are likely about as big around as a man's forearm. You ain't gonna break one with an airplane.
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Aircraft have broken them so presumably they come in different sizes, depending on the application.
 
Very devastating event for lots of folks in West Texas and Tulsa that knew the pilot. I attended Cody's funeral yesterday. Fantastic young man, becoming a pilot was his dream. I took him up for his birthday when he was a young teen, handed him the controls of my 182, and he flew the plane straight and level, which in my experience is unusual for a first-timer. Once he was old enough to drive, it wasn't unusual for me (or other pilots at our airport) to pull up to the hangar after a flight to find Cody, who'd been driving by, waiting to talk about flying. He was nuts about airplanes and aviation history, the kind of young person that GA needs going forward, so it's a big loss.
 
Im sorry to hear
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of the loss. We have a couple of those big stacks around here and it's a miracle nobody has hit them.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
ok what physically can happen when you hit a cable?
-cable can break, you continue on (less likely)
-cable 'wins'; cuts vital structure off a/c ie tail parts/wing, down you go
-cable flexes as you strike it, slowing you enough to stall a wing +/- inducing significant yaw, down you go maybe in a spin
-cable directly incapacitates pilot regardless of a/c damage
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The guy wires on 1,500' + towers are 2"-3" cable. They are connected with pulleys to tensioning blocks set below ground level that weigh more than ten tons.

If you hit one it's not going to flex or be displaced. It's going to slice open the aircraft like it was an empty beer can.

In the 60s a fighter from NAS Dallas hit the 1,500' KRLD/KDFW tower in Cedar Hill. It took about 400' off the tower. Doty Tower Services stabilized it, mounted new antennas, and it resumed operation.

A few years later a 1,800-and change tower replaced it, but the old one is still there and used as a backup.
 
3393RP said:
If you hit one it's not going to flex or be displaced. It's going to slice open the aircraft like it was an empty beer can.
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An EA-6B Prowler at 450kts can cut a cable and survive. I don't know how large the Italian gondola cable was but with the car having a 7000 pound capacity, I would think it would have been substantial.
 
As a kid I remember a tower down the road from us. I do not know how tall it is, but I remember watching men take most of the morning to climb to the top. Years later I found out what the empty gallon jugs were for.......
 
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