"Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable)" wrote:

On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:18:04 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

And hope that an Airforce jet doesn't clip one of the guy wires.
It's happened at least once. A small UHF TV station on the east coast
of Florida lost the top of their tower that way and it 'went dark',
rather than rebuild. That was about 20 years ago.

That raises a lot of questions: What was the Air Force Jet doing
hugging the deck that tight (and not on a Military Base) without
knowing what was there first? And was the tower tall enough and/or
in an approach path to where it was required to have obstruction
lights? And did it have them installed and operational?

Unless there was negligence on the part of the Tower Owner, the Air
Force owes them a new tower. "You break it, you bought it." It's on
the charts...


I heard claims that it was a careless pilot, but I also heard that
the jet had an instumentation failure. The results of the investigation
were never released. I beleve there were heavy clouds in spots, and the
tip of one wink snagged one of the top guy wires, snapping it and
buckling the top of the tower. The tower company was out of business,
so no new parts were availible and other companies wanted repalcment
parts signed off by a mechanical engineer. The station was low budget,
and already on the verge of failure, so the accident was the last straw.

The federal government finally paid for the damage, but by then the
station was bankrupt. The paid off some bills with the money and walked
away.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.