I am working on a project that involves some wires strung between two towers. The towers are not in the U.S.
There are just two towers. I do not know how tall they are, nor how far apart they are. But I am guessing each tower is at least a couple hundred feet tall, and hundreds of feet between them.
There are four wires strung between the two towers, with each wire at a different elevation. Each wire is roughly 3/8" in diameter and consists of seven strands. I believe the strands are twisted. Each strand is steel with a galvanized plating.
I don’t think the wires are used for distributing electricity. For that purpose, aluminum wire (with a steel core) is usually used. I was thinking the wires might be used for electrical grounding. But why use four? And why use steel?
I have not seen these towers, nor have I seen photos, specs, etc. There may also be other things strung between the towers. This is all the information I have at this point, unfortunately. I am just curious on what the purpose of these wires might be.
Well, you need something to mount those large colored balls on. The balls there of course to keep pilots from hitting the wires. It all makes sense now.
I’m curious as to what way you are “working” on it if you know nothing about it.Shouldn’t at the very least the number of feet of wire you are using be kind of important?
It seems unlikely to be any electrical application, because steel has poor electrical conductivity - aluminum is 5 times better, and copper is 10 times better. Steel wires are more typically used for structural applications.
If it’s structural, then it’s either for holding something up in the air, or somehow contributing to the tower’s structural integrity. But for supporting the towers, it makes more sense to have guy wires down to the ground. So my best guess is that it’s for holding something in the air. Maybe it’s the load-bearing cable that supports electrical cables or some other type of connection, using saddles like these.
The cable is just about right for a zip line, as suggested above. But it seems odd to have multiple zip line between the same 2 towers.
There are a lot of a antenna designs that might use multiple parallel wires. The fan dipole is one kind, the folded dipole is another. However, most would use different lengths of wire for different bands and would also have a third support in the middle. These are antennas for transmitting and receiving. The length of a an RX-only antenna wire is less important than one that transmits…
… and the length of a spark-reception RX antenna hardly matters at all. In the 70’s, Lighting research used to use structures that looked something like that.
I’m still curious about how one could work on a project with, apparently, very little data; sounds like a government cockup. Is it a Federal project? Are you a gov’t employee? Am I in trouble for asking the hard questions?
Could it be part of the guy wire system? Two towers close together would probably each have sloping guy wires fanning out in the directions away from the other tower, but parallel horizontal guys between the towers. The heights of the horizontal wires would match the heights of the tops of the sloping wires.
How reasonable this is depends in part on how you happen to be working on the horizontal wires. Perhaps the construction of the sloping wires has a lot to do with creating the anchoring points on the ground and others are doing that, but the wires you are working on are the ones that don’t involve anchors.
Hmm, that’s something I have not considered. Indeed, if the towers were far apart, each tower would have it’s own set of guy wires (to ground) all around it. But if the towers are close together, they may have decided to string guy wires between them, in addition to guy wires (to ground) on the other side of each tower.
I apologize for not providing info on why I am inquiring about this. I don’t know how much I am allowed to say at this time, so I am playing it safe. But I do appreciate the responses.
3/8" doesn’t sound like the sort of thing for a really long wire…
Why build two towers close together ?You’d just build one.
So the idea that they are just guy wires is ruled out.
The wires are for holding something up in between the towers. Lights… signs… antenna…
A large sign might be destroyed by the hurricane winds… Now a grid of lights on thin wires would withstand the hurricane… and yet appear just as big as a big sign of that area.
Peurto Rico rebuilding ?