Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: What is the highest Self Supporting Transmission Tower in The U.S./Canada?

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 01-21-2006, 03:18 PM:

The WTVR TV tower at 849 ft. here in Richmond was the tallest of its kind when it was completed in 1952. What is the tallest self supporting (no guy cables) in the U.S./Canada, the world today?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-21-2006, 04:09 PM:

The CN Tower in Toronto? I've seen it listed as the world's tallest free standing object. While it is mainly thought of as an observation tower, radio and TV broadcasts are sent from it.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 01-21-2006, 06:00 PM:

Although these are not self supporting they are certainly worth mentioning!! The World's tallest above land sturcture is the mast for KVLY-TV in North Dakota, built in 1963, it is 2,063 ft tall. The tallest above land structure of all time was the Warszawa Radio Mast near Konstantynów, Poland, built in 1974, it was 2,120 ft tall before collapsing during renovation work in 1991. It collapsed while exchanging guy cables in the wrong order..... Oops!

Facts about the tower from the KVLY Web Site:

The KVLY-TV tower, 2,063 feet high, serves an area larger than the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut, with 1,000 square miles to spare.
The tower contains two million feet of steel, guy wire strands and elevator cable.

The tower and guy anchors take up 160 acres of space.

The antenna on top of the tower is 113 feet high and weighs 9,000 pounds.

The steel tower is taller than the combined height of the Great Pyramid Khufu at Giza, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Washington Monument.

If the KVLY tower had its base at the bottom of the Royal Gorge in Colorado, the antenna would still be 563 feet above the upper rim.

If a 20 second commercial started at the same moment a baseball was dropped from the top of the KVLY tower, it would end nearly four seconds before the ball hit the ground.

In a 70 mile-per-hour wind, the beacon light on top of the KVLY tower will move approximately ten feet.

If an iron worker on the antenna dropped his wrench, it would be traveling at a speed of 250 miles per hour when it hit the ground.

If a hunter at the base of the KVLY tower shot at a goose flying near the top with a .45 caliber pistol, he would have to lead the goose by more than the length of a football field, or approximately 335 feet.

The tower was assembled in 33 working days by an 11-man crew with no casualties.

The total weight of steel in the tower is 864,500 pounds. The total length of guy wires is 40,125 feet, or 7.6 miles. The elevator cable used in construction of the tower is 7,870 feet.

Mark

Posted by Don Furr (Member # 1469) on 01-21-2006, 06:28 PM:

There is a 1990 foot plus self supporter near Sargeant Texas.

Don

Posted by Wayne Keyser (Member # 2420) on 01-21-2006, 08:32 PM:

Bill Enos: I had a short, unhappy cameraman job at WTVR in the early 70's.

Best memory: get unbelievably stoned, lay back on the grass under the tower looking straight up at the apex - the windier the day is, the better. Somehow the karmic power flows doen all 849 feet and you almost achieve enlightenment.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 01-21-2006, 09:31 PM:

It was probably all that RF slowly cooking your brains out...

Jokie jokie! [Big Grin]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-21-2006, 10:42 PM:

THere is a 750-foot radio tower about 15 miles from my house. It's fun to lie at the base of it and look up on a starry night. At one time this tower was the tallest man-made thing in Montana, not sure if it still holds that title or not.

Posted by Jeff Stricker (Member # 224) on 01-24-2006, 02:59 PM:

Certainly not the tallest, but the Cincinnati Star TV tower is quite unusual.

http://hawkins.pair.com/star_tower.html

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 01-24-2006, 03:23 PM:

The Star tower is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. You can see by looking to the west while traveling on I-75 through Cincinnati. Thanks for the link to that page...I've wanted to know more about that tower.

Cincinnati, actually Mason, still has the mighty WLW tower, which one time blasted out at 500,000 watts. I've heard that you could hold a flourescent tube up a few miles from that and it would glow.

Info on the "Big One's" tower is also on the Hawkin's Pages.

WLW Information Page

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-31-2006, 01:18 PM:

I can't think of any self supporting transmission towers that are more than a few hundred feet high. A large majority of them have been torn down and replaced with much taller guyed structures. Many of the ones remaining have no transmission gear left on them.

What does come to mind though is (the famed) Inco's Superstack (built in '72), the western hemisphere's tallest free standing chimney at 381 metres (1,257 feet) and Canada's 2nd tallest structure, next to the CN tower (built in '76) at 553 metres.

Science North is in the forground, home of a 200 seat IMAX theatre.

The two tallest (guyed) television towers in Canada are both in towns I've called home... the third tallest structure in Canada is Hamilton's CHCH Television Tower at 357.5 metres (built in '60). The fifth tallest structure in Canada is CKVR's Television tower in Barrie at 304.8 metres (built in '78).

CBC's tower (built in '72) in Shawinigan, Quebec (hometown of the 20th Prime Minister) was one of the tallest in Canada until it was decided to blow it up [Smile]

(at a cost of ~$10M to destroy and rebuild it) after a guy in a Cessna 150M (C-GGXY) got stuck in it in April of 2001.

Posted by Dick Vaughan (Member # 540) on 02-01-2006, 02:57 AM:

In the UK the tallest TV mast was at Emley Moor about 15 miles from the Museum here in Bradford .Erected in 1964 it was 365metres(1265 feet ) tall but was guy supported.

In 1969 it too was brought down by ice and eventually replaced by a self supporting tower 330metres (1083 feet ) tall.

This site shows both towers along with some interesting snippets of information.

The UK Government declared Emley Tower a Grade II Listed Building of 'significant architectural or historic interest' in 2002

Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 02-01-2006, 09:46 AM:

Another neat fact about KVLY

Their call sign used to be KVHI-TV, which allegedly stood for worlds HIghest structure.

A good friend of mine was a switcher over there some years back. Also in the neighborhood is KXJB-TV4 which missed the 2063' mark by several feet, around 2060' in height. Both towers are within 10 miles of each other, KXJB's tower has collapsed twice, one in 1964 at their old Valley City site when a hellicopter became entwined in the guy wires. It collapsed again in 1997 in one of our worse ice storms.

The tallest tower I work around is KLTA-FM, coming in at a meager 750 feet or so.

Josh