KHCC-FM Tower Construction

                                           (last updated Feb 25, 2008)  

Here are photos of the project with the most recent at the top.



Then it's carefully lowered into position and
bolted on.

Then everyone heaves and rotates the section
around the gin pole into position.

The section is carefully moved up alongside
the gin pole.

It's a relatively fast ride to the top. In about
five minutes it reaches the crew.

The fork lift is disconnected and its time to
go up. Note the trolley pulley and tag line
on the right of the tower section. Using this
line keeps the tower section pulled away
from the tower and steadies it in the wind.

A section is lifted from the ground with a
combination of the load line and the loader.
This keeps it from dragging through the dirt
and maintains control of it until it's fully in
the air.

Off they go.

It's a cloudy and very cold day but these guys
are heading up anyway. Here they clip their
harnesses on to the "pill" or 2000# weight
on the end of the load line. Kenny is known
to ride this way upside down.

The men grab the tower section and rotate it
around the gin pole and into position. They
bolt it on, slide up the gin pole, and hoist
another section up. Over and over. We have
about 45 sections overall. On a flawless
Kansas day, it is said they could put up six
sections or 180' of tower. We're still waiting
for that day :)

The gin pole, on the side of the tower, is used
as a crane now to lift each section. This pole
slides up the tower as required. A large pulley
at the top of the gin pole pivots around allowing
the tower section to be pivoted into position.
This tower section weighs approximately
7,500 lbs and is 30 feet long.

Jan 14: A new day, and the tower continues
upward. Here the forklift assists in starting a
section upward.

Now there's a good day's work. We're underway.

Here's what the crew enjoys most: working in
the air. Here they ease the two sections onto
the tower.

Adding 60' of tower to the stub.

Here is one of the two massive winches. This
unit has three drums that independently pull each
of three guy wires up to tension. A second
winch (out of the photo) has three drums:
one to lift tower sections one to lift the gin pole,
and one to run a tag line that pulls outward on
the upward-bound tower sections to keep
them from banging into the tower.


Pulling up the temporary guy wires.

Set.

Weldon uses a pipe in the base to rotate the
tower into proper orientation.

Using the forklift to move the base over to the base pad.

Almost there. This stub is 120' long. The crane is not
boomed out to it's full extent possible.

Up we go.

Jan 12: At the break of day, the men hook up
the machinery to the tower stub. Here the
forklift connects to the base of the tower to
control it's movement as the crane lifts the
other end.

Moved into position, it's ready for the next
day's job.

The boom has it's own trailer.



January 11, 2008
After weeks of searching a 250 ton crane is
found and shows up. This is an amazing
machine! The main boom, without extensions,
rises 240' feet. The truck weighs in at 150,000 lbs.





Moving around 30' tower sections.

With impact wrenches, the men are tightening
the hundreds of bolts.






Here we have a tower section being assembled.

Lining up the bolt holes.

Our crew foreman, Weldon. He's usually
building towers overseas.


Four semi's lined up Friday, Nov 2 for unloading.
Carefully picking 30' long tower legs off the truck
with a forklift with 4'-wide tines.

Backing up the road through the gate. As far
as we know, the operator did not dump any
of these loads.

The tower legs piled up.

The bottom 1166' of the tower are "bolt-together"
with the tower crew building them on-site.

The top 130' of the tower was welded up at the
factory. This section supports the FM antenna and
is dimensionally designed to minimally interfere
with the FM signal. Notice the large index plate.
This plate sits atop large I-beams bolted
across the tower legs below. The plate allows
us orient the top portion of the tower differently
from the tower below. With this, we can optimally
position the FM antenna.

Here is the tower base. All 1,300,000 pounds of
downward pressure land here.

How about these turnbuckles! They are approximately
five feet long and hold loads of over 240,000 pounds each.