Job Requirement: REALLY big stones!

"NO safety harness?"
 
No thank you!
 
One scary job!

yow....! 

I had the opportunity to go with a friend of mine to the Channel 5 (WRALTV) towers a number of years back. He needed to service one of his transmitters (they lease tower space to other companies). 

When we got there he asked me if I was claustrophobic or afraid of heights.   No, and no.  

The trip up and back down was a good 20 minute elevator ride each direction.  Getting out of the elevator, you had to step across about 12" of "straight down"...... he told me the last guy he took up was fine until they got to the platform. Then he latched onto the elevator cage and refused to step across the open space.... he remained frozen with fear in the elevator until they got back down. 

We got into a small 2 man elevator. It took us up to his platform. IIRC there were 4 platforms total.  The platform we need to go to (3 of 4) was the last one up before you needed a faraday suit to proceed when the transmitters are broadcasting.   The platform is actually pretty big but has a steel grid for a floor and that is a bit un-nerving looking down.  They try to avoid solid surfaces up there for obvious reasons. 

I forget the actual height we went to.... but the towers are 2000 feet tall and our platform (#3) was something over 1500' up. 
Quite a view. We toured the transmitter building after he finished and we got down. They had a photo of the tower that crashed on Christmas morning a number of years before that due to ice. A photographer happened to be there, and the engineer on site hear the cables start to pop, and said the tower was about the come down... the photographer got it on film. 

BTW: 57gregy lives really close by those towers in Clayton NC.... or he did.... 

Gadzooks!!!

The highest I've ever got on a tower was 250 feet!!

No way am I doing that.... 

Wow, just watching that is making me not feel so good

I have to agree with one of the comments: "The guy's massive balls must make that climb even harder"
 
And fair play to you Herb!
 
 

It's weird, I'm absolutely fine standing on a roof, on scaffolding, or going up high as you like in a scissor lift or cherry-picker, but I get to 'that' rung on a ladder and that's it, jelly legs..

I got dizzy and nauseous watching that. Halfway up the itty bitty pokey outy little laddery things at the top, I could not bare to watch anymore. I have this odd thing with heights. I can go up a 100 foot mast on a bobbing sailboat and love every minute of it, but things like balconies fek me up. Hitting the deck, or possibly even the water from that hight is gonna kill ya, yet I am fine with it. Ride a glass elevator and I am clinging to the back wall.

That video was crazy. I've had to climb a 100' freestanding tower and do repairs. It was a hot summer day with a storm coming in, that tower was swaying like crazy in the high wind. That's my limit where my own body strength was involved. When climbing, I had a special harness to wear. A safety belt with a huge brass fitting designed to clamp to a pole. The ladder had a tube running straight up the centre and the fitting was slid onto the tube when you got on the ladder. As you climb, the fitting slides up the tube as you move. If you were to fall, the fitting on the safety harness would lock into position on the tube. A vertical climb with tools can be tiring and those ladder rungs are very slippery.

No way those guys climbed 2,000 ft without some unseen safety device. The hook they were using on the hand holds offered no protection at all since it could easily slide off the end. They took a big risk to make a youtube video.