ETTL News & Views
Volume 12 • Spring 2004 Newsletter
The new electronic version of ETTL's Newsletter … Keeping you up to date on
what's happening at ETTL Engineers & Consultants … typical current projects …
how we can be of service to you … links to our web site and people … and more!

Going Up!
The Tallest TV Tower in East Texas

ETTL PROVIDED SITE ASSESSMENT, GEOTECHNICAL,
AND SOIL RESISTIVITY SERVICES

We talked the other day with Phil Hurley, who is the moving force behind what will be, at 1,600 feet, the tallest TV tower in East Texas. It will beam KYTX programming to a large area, including such cities as Henderson, Jacksonville, Longview, Kilgore, Nacogdoches, Lufkin, and Tyler (where KYTX's offices are now located). KYTX will be the CBS affiliate for this area. Plans are to complete the tower this summer.

Phil, who has been in the TV world for more than two decades, managed Channel 7 (KLTV) in the mid-80's; built Channel 10 (KETK) in 1986, sold it in 1997; and now is having the KYTX tower erected about 35 miles SSE of Tyler, in the countryside near the little town of New Summerfield.

Phil told us the transmitter building was nearly complete (as of April 1) - a block construction with a sturdy concrete roof, well able to withstand ice falling from guy wires during winter thaws. The photo at left was taken about March 25, when the tower itself was at 100 feet. It reached 180 feet, the first guy point, on April 1st, and has been proceeding apace ever since.

The tower will be supported by 27 guy wires, three sets of nine, anchored, as the sketch at right shows, at distances of 400, 800 and 1,200 feet (ground distance) from the tower itself. (Just two sets of guy wires are shown.)

As indicated by the subhead at the beginning of this story, ETTL was retained to carry out three pre-construction services at the site. The first was a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA), conducted to see if there were environmental concerns present. Happily, the assessment gave the site a clean bill of health. As you may know, ETTL has completed literally thousands of ESA's in the past decade, not only at prospective tower sites but at a great range of industrial, commercial and private sites over a wide region. (In-depth info about our ESA services is on ETTL's web site.)

The size of this project is indicated by the photo at left above. The pickup was parked a few feet from where the tower now is being built, while the arrow points at an ETTL drilling rig taking geotechnical soil samples 1,200 ft away at a guy wire anchor location by the trees. ETTL used its Mobile B-61 HDX drilling rig (center) to take samples to a depth of 20 ft at each of the nine locations where the 27 guy wires will be anchored, and to a depth of 30 ft where the tower is being erected. The samples were analyzed in ETTL's soil laboratories at its headquarters facilities in Tyler. ETTL's subsequent geotechnical report provided data needed for the guy-wire anchor designs as well as the foundation design for the tower itself. The report also included foundation recommendations for the transmitter building. These geotechnical activities comprised the second pre-construction service provided by ETTL. (See in-depth information about ETTL's geotechnical services on our website.)
ETTL's third pre-construction service was to determine the resistivity of the soil at the tower site. ETTL's Robert Duke, P.E., took readings with an AEMC Digital Ground Resistance Tester (right-hand photo). The procedure he followed generated soil resistivity data for use in the design phase of the tower's grounding system, enabling design personnel to make sure it will be compatible with the soil in which it is placed. Because soil resistivity (electrical resistance of the subsurface) varies widely, often within the same site, depending on soil type and density as well as depth, a soil resistivity "profile" can be crucial to grounding system design. If soil resistance is too high, the grounding system may fail, resulting in loss of (or damage to) highly expensive electrical equipment. (Our web site also contains detailed information on this specialized ETTL service.)

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