How would you like to be the guy doing the unrigging?
sure, that looks like a nice catwalk/ladder.
That was quite a process. Setting up a hammerhead with suitable foundation for each tower is an expensive endeavor . You could see they were using shock lanyards and 100% tie off. No danger to speak of as long as they don't take shortcuts. Once one is much above 25 ft. the extra distance doesn't make any difference unless they are high enough to make a good bye phone call on the way down.
As was oft said - It's not how far you fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom.
It's that tiny little delta T at the bottom of the equation.
Never saw that style crane lifting from both ends simultaneously. I guess the crane's tower becomes part of the powerline tower when they are done.
Later in the video building a different tower, the crane seemed to be being extended by putting in sections at ground level, raising the whole mast at once, so I would guess the crane in the red and white tower was built and disassembled in the same manner...maybe...but how do they get the boom and house and counterweights down?
Yeah, a dual ended tower crane, kind of handy how the load on one end is the counterweight for the opposite side. Must keep a single operator busy, unless there's two?
What's the reason for them to be so high?
Looks like they are crossing a river, with both a long span, and ships to clear. The one in the countryside maybe not, but maybe it is just to minimize the number of towers needed. Being in China they may not be bound by visual pollution stuff, like around here, they will build a new 500 kv line with towers comically short where it looks like the bottom 2/3 was chopped off, and they do not extend above the treeline, so people can't see them unless they are right under them.
Is that partly the reason for the fires you folk get in Ca?
Worked power industry long enough to get a feel for Circumference of field around lines. Ours at 345kV (Actually closer to 360) was close to eight feet radius around line, ANY item entering that zone would be affected, anything grounded got within 10-12 feet and line power would arc to ground fault. Worst I saw was Mo Dept of Conservation doing prescribed "Prairie" burns of wild fields, a few random cedars lit off with Dense Thick smoke and our lines arc faulted to ground THROUGH THE SMOKE. Lines were at low point greater than 50 feet above grade, had to be careful in summer as ACSR cable sag due to ambient heat and current flow induced heat sag would increase by as much as 3 feet. Do NOT see the need for such High Towers, have similar lines and power flows in our Gulf States areas crossing rivers used for Sea Going vessels and NOWHERE near as tall. They may be using too few towers for distances achieved and to decrease sag issues went to such extreme height. In 1980s a combine got under the UE Portage Des Sioux power station feeders, misty foggy morning, trying to beat weather coming on with high temps for the week, lines had sagged from extreme load heating and ambient conditions some 6-8 feet, combine caught a small rise where dust in moisture laden air the power arced to the combine, driver killed, added smoke from grain oil and rubber burning the Breaker auto reclose function kept hitting the combine until the Power Supply agents shut down the line. Just UGLY!!!
No, the reason for the fires is that nobody clears the land any more, and it is 2-3x thicker with brush than it used to be, and people build houses in the middle of it. Plus the power line infrastructure is sometimes 100 years old now, but it has been starting fires ever since there have been power lines, and nobody thought to sue the power company, until now.
Makes me sick at my stomach just watching it. I can’t even get on my 10 foot roof without feeling uneasy.
Good grief ! A little over 910 feet high.
I can see that they somehow use a jib to lower the tower inside the hydro tower but they don’t show how the boom came down. Heavy lift helicopter?
One of my hangar neighbors walked down and asked me a favor, could I replace some bulbs for him? He flew all over the country but could not stomach a 10' ladder. There is just no correlation between the two. I didn't know that until that moment.
If you think 900 ft is bad, try climbing up the outside of 1700ft ........
Yup, I'd bet 90% of the pilots I know, and me, would get queasy watching that video. Weird how that works. I've noticed that since I quit active construction and now just watch people do it (true story) my height tolerance has fallen a bit. The rare times I need to scamper up a ladder to check on how an HVAC load is being rigged isn't quite the scamper it used to be, more of a steady climb. Now and then in the plane, cresting a ridgeline by a hundred feet or lower, and then having it drop away so that you are instantly now several thousand feet above the ground, in a plane I built and maintain lets remember, does make me think now and then, "how is this possible?"
The human brain can be easily fooled..?
I hope the Chinese used better steel in that tower than the crap used in the drawbar pins that Tractor Supply sells..........
My stomach was getting twisted up too. I rent a boom lift at work on occasion, always a 45 footer. This year I got a 60 and that extra 15 feet made me real uneasy!!
You would think they would have better tie off's, like closed rings for the fall protection. The one sided ladder rungs look like the carabiner could slide right off the end. If someone did fall I wonder if the one sided rungs would bend???
I got some fingerprints left on some steel and I was way before so much tie off was enforced.
The weather is really miserable with stuff like that. Can't get away from it.