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One Shell Plaza Mast

To correct CW...
5 lives were lost on December 7 1982 at 9:12am, all riding the antenna up. Ch.20 was the only Broadcast media transmitting from the tower at the time. Ch.20 is no longer on the Senior Road Antenna.
 
CW said:
Nope, it was the upper half of the CBR (Cavity Back Radiator) antenna that was going up when everything fell; the bottom half had already been placed on top....The rigging done to the antenna section (~100ft in length) was done with minimum clamping....and then the top pulley on the gin pole broke under stress....IIRC, only 3 lives were lost....2 on the antenna (they were riding the section up) and one on the ground..The tower is jointly owned by all radio stations on it; run by the SRTG (Sr Road Tower Group)..Ch20 is a tenant on it...and has no ownership of the stick.
Click to expand...

Of course, the video of this tragedy in on YouTube, but a very good write up of this can be found at http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/tvtower/tv3.htm
 
sportzguy said:
To correct CW...
5 lives were lost on December 7 1982 at 9:12am, all riding the antenna up. Ch.20 was the only Broadcast media transmitting from the tower at the time. Ch.20 is no longer on the Senior Road Antenna.
Click to expand...

I had heard there were 2 maybe three riding it up....I saw the video and can only account for two coming off (but then the video is not that detailed given the circumstances).....I had thought there was likely others on the tower...but I had never heard there were 5 riding up it...
Yes, I should have said KTXH WAS a tenant....they are no longer on Sr Road
 
Yes unfortunatley there were 5 riggers on the second half of the antenna that morning.
The video wasn't to detailed, because I dropped the camera when I saw the tower come apart and started running for the opening behind me and waiting for something to hit me in the back.
If you watch the History Channel, my shots are in the 1st story on "Engineering Disasters #5".
 
Sportzguy, that video - and specifically the audio of it - has haunted me for 25 years. Think I heard it on an NPR story soon after the event; it was a long time before I could view it. I'm assuming that it would be your audio as well? Come to think of it, I'm impressed that the audio wasn't just one long curse word; I would have probably invented new ones as the thing fell around me :-/
 
Yes the audio was from the same tape.
I didn't even notice anything wrong until I heard the clink of the metal as the on-site fabricated lifting device came flying off the section of antenna. I then stood up from the back of the Ramcharger tailgate I was sitting on and got the video of the antenna sliding down the guy cable. The whole thing from first clink thru the "freight train" tornado sound of the guy wires whipping and steel crashing was all of 23 seconds.
I came running back to the truck, got on the two way radio and asked if everyone was O.K. in the trailer. I got a reply of "trailers O.K."... I then got back into the truck and drove back up to the "mess".
I saw alot of stuff that I didn't shoot video of, but I believe Marshall Jard of 13 got all the bodies on the ground or the ones that were wrapped up in the antenna.
 
Doctor_Technical said:
Sportzguy, that video - and specifically the audio of it - has haunted me for 25 years. Think I heard it on an NPR story soon after the event; it was a long time before I could view it. I'm assuming that it would be your audio as well? Come to think of it, I'm impressed that the audio wasn't just one long curse word; I would have probably invented new ones as the thing fell around me :-/
Click to expand...

When I heard of the tower falling from a ham radio friend of mine, I remember watching 13's news later that evening and then Nightline showing the fall over and over......I thought the audio was intentionally blocked because some words were being shouted that wouldnt go over good over national TV!!!
To be up on the replacement Sr Road tower years later was a high point in my life (no pun intended)....but I had to pause and reflect while standing on the platform on what had happened on that fateful day......of course I had been on the old DeWalt tower as well in the early 90s...and still have pics of the 1st trip up....
but forgot a camera everytime I went up Sr Road :(
Sportguy, I had heard a rumor that someone at one of the stations going on Sr Road had a dream the night before about a tower falling.......did you ever hear that?
 
I can't remember who that would have been (The dream), maybe Danny Judd who was at KFMK at that time. I watched my original tape after seeing the You Tube stuff and think that the audio was patch spliced onto whatever that person put up on theTube.
On my original you can hear the metal bar clinking, the sound of metal sliding on metal and then my "Oh My God" before I dropped the camera and moved out of the way (if you know what I mean).
The video of the riggers was taken the afternoon before as I road up in the "bucket" that took them from the tower back to the ground.
I'm not sure where the poster got his/her casualty numbers, but if you print it on the internet "It MUST be true". There is alot of steel still in the ground out there that was never removed and I guess never will.
As for the old original Senior Road tower, the Dewalt 1549'.... I always have said "When the Cat 4-5 storm comes through here...It most likely will be the only stick still standing.
 
sportzguy said:
I can't remember who that would have been (The dream), maybe Danny Judd who was at KFMK at that time. I watched my original tape after seeing the You Tube stuff and think that the audio was patch spliced onto whatever that person put up on theTube.
On my original you can hear the metal bar clinking, the sound of metal sliding on metal and then my "Oh My God" before I dropped the camera and moved out of the way (if you know what I mean).
The video of the riggers was taken the afternoon before as I road up in the "bucket" that took them from the tower back to the ground.
I'm not sure where the poster got his/her casualty numbers, but if you print it on the internet "It MUST be true". There is alot of steel still in the ground out there that was never removed and I guess never will.
As for the old original Senior Road tower, the Dewalt 1549'.... I always have said "When the Cat 4-5 storm comes through here...It most likely will be the only stick still standing.
Click to expand...

I know that plenty of steel that was just cut off at ground level and had dirt thrown over it...The Channel 39 tower in DFW when it fell in 96 did not go into the ground like Sr Road did..most of that tower still sits on Belt Line Rd in front of where it fell...As for Dewalt, I would think a Cat 4-5 will take it down.....I know Motorola was looking at buying it back in the late 80s or early 90s and when they found out how much it was overstressed and how much it would cost to bring it up to "mother M's" specs, they backed out.....That is the last tower of that design (except for the shortened Hill tower in DFW thanks to the Navy jet ;) still standing in the US out of the original 9 or 10 built in the 60s....Is the plan to drop it now put off until NTSC goes away?? Last I heard, Channel 14 decided to stay on the tower until they HAD to turn off their analog..plus the fact about an endangered species in the "danger" area where it was planned to fall into....I WANT to be there when that tower comes down...I still have my pics of walking out to the edge of the walkway at the end and talking a pic straight down.....I need to scan it in and post it...in the center is a TINY blue dot...My SUV at the base of the stick :)
 
This will sound silly, but: in this post 9/11 times, is it OK for any non-broadcast-industry-person (like moi) to just take photos of these broadcast towers? I don't mean driving all the way to the base of the towers. That'd be flagrant trespassing. More like driving on the Ft Bend Tollway and taking the photos from there.

I'm very curious. I'd like to know from which tower/tier/antenna radiates the signals I'm listening/watching.

So far I only know that 9 or so FMs radiate from Senior Road...
 
thathoustonradiogeek said:
This will sound silly, but: in this post 9/11 times, is it OK for any non-broadcast-industry-person (like moi) to just take photos of these broadcast towers? I don't mean driving all the way to the base of the towers. That'd be flagrant trespassing. More like driving on the Ft Bend Tollway and taking the photos from there.

I'm very curious. I'd like to know from which tower/tier/antenna radiates the signals I'm listening/watching.

So far I only know that 9 or so FMs radiate from Senior Road...
Click to expand...

Nothing illegal about it. Heck, Scott Fybush does it all the time ;)
You can tell which tower has what stations on it via the FCC web site....just note the Lat/Long and match the stations to the towers.....I have a list somewhere that shows who is on what...
Yes, there are 9 FMs on Sr Road.....plus LPTV33 was there on the 1100ft platform...not sure if its still there..since PAX was supposed to move down to Sr Road from Splendora and 33 was a translator for them.
 
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