yes Helicopter. we just had a chopper take up some erosion control for us. i talked to the pilot, he said his bread/butter is tower work.

Not just no. HELL NO.

And +1 on the chute. Hell, just skip the climb down and jump! I wonder if OSHA would approve?

How do they keep em' from swinging knocking people off? That's crazy.

Not only do they have to climb, but drag that tool bag like a ball and chain. I don't think I can make 50' before i pee in my pants

How hard can it be? I mean have you ever driven by one and seen a skeleton at the top?
green text

I used to do that about 25 years ago, not change the light bulbs at the top but climb towers to fix antenna problems at various levels. I can tell ya, at 600+ feet Every thing below looks tiny. Funny thing is, when I was first hired it was scary, scary, scary. But, we get used to stuff and I looked forward to climbing on nice days, the views were great. Not so nice days, no so fun.
It definitely was a workout. Dang, every 75-100' I'd have to stop for a few minutes to get my arms back.
Unfortunately, a few months after I left that line of work my best friend slipped and fell to his death. To this day I can't go near a cliff edge or get up on the roof without feeling vertigo. Just watching that video gets me dizzy.

Never seen a skeleton at the top but more than a few make a quick trip back down. I've built a few hundred cell phone towers and the guys I use to erect the towers have lost several men in the last 10 or 15 years.

JR

Wusses....

+1 on sweaty palms and getting dizzy. Once the guy went outside the structure I was done. There are a couple videos of kids in Russia climbing a huge suspension bridge - no safety lines or anything. Equally scary.

What about those Indians that build sky scrapers? Nuts.

+1

sweating palms

This video was posted here a while ago, and it still is just as bad as the first time!

1700' gives you a whole lot more time to think about your family on the way down. 100' you haev about enough time to say "Aaaaaww sh".

Why don't they leave a tool bag up there? And I wouldn't do it with out a parachute!

.....in case your buddy above you dropped the wrench!

You get about 2.5 seconds.

With 1700 feet, you will get more than 10 seconds. How much more, not sure, since you'll reach a variable terminal velocity, depending on orientation. If you tucked in and went head down, I bet you'd be close to 300 feet per second (200-225 mph). (Say 100 meters per second or around 350 kph)

I climbed to the top of a water tower once. It was a workout.

Don't know what he needed to do up there but that tool bag looks too big. I guess you don't want to climb back down if you forgot your #2 Phillips tip screwdriver.

There's an episode of World's Toughest Fixes (available on Netflix, season 1 episode 7) where the host goes up with one of these crews, including camera men. Pretty crazy.

My luck, i'd be the one picked to do a rescue up there..

Never thought about it, how do you guys get at them? Tell me, what if its one of your crew or you that has to go up for the rescue? How do they get selected? I am sure most guys in the fire dept. will say oh siht on that one, right? you gotta drag all your gear up as well and have to somehow drag the man down. Hats off to you guys Vinman.

hopefully they could be picked off by a helicopter...

But 9 times out of 10 that wouldnt be the case... wind, weather conditions etc..

First of all, anyone picked would have to be a qualified high angle rescue technician. ( such as myself) . for an operation such as a rescue to the very top of that tower would be at the very minumum, a 6 man operation. We would have to determine what the purpose of the rescue is. Injury, equipment failure? Equipment failure being the best scenario, injury the worse. If its injury related then the extent of the injury determines patient packing and amount and type of equipment that need to be taken up, which in a situation such as that tower becomes a logistical nitemare.
They said there is an elevator up to the 1600 ft level, how big is it? If need be, can we fit a stokes basket in it or would it have to be hauled up the outside the whole way up? Either raising or lowering the victim would require muliple hauling systems to be set up at different levels.
It would be interesting.:)

I would have no problem doing it. Confidence in your equipment is the key. Over a certain height its all the same anyway.