Trylon T-500 Homebrew
Safety Cable Installation.

Below are pictures of a homebrew safety cable system that I have installed on my tower.  Because
of the type of tower that I have, being steel and very heavy duty, it can handle a safety cable system.
I do not know if Rohn towers can handle something like this safely.  I do not condone or even suggest
that anyone copy this.  I am putting this up here because it is one of my projects.

The reasons that I did this are that I like to stay connected to the tower at all times while climbing
and having to connect and disconnect two lanyards while going up gets old fast and my hands get
tired when I could have been up at the top working.  The number two reason is that, while I do wear
a full safety harness and use fall arrest lanyards attached to my back D ring, I don't relesh the prospect
of falling the 4' or so that the lanyards provide and then slamming my body against the tower should
I slip.  :(   The cable system keeps me about 8 or 10 inches from the tower at all times while I'm
climbing and if I fall it's less than a foot drop before I slam against the tower.  LOT less dammage to
my favorite person, that being me! <grin>

If your concerned with the 4 bolts at the top of the tower holding my weight (regardless of size) then
consider this;  Normally if I were climbing without the safety cable and were using dual fall arrest
lanyards I would be clipping the top one on to a cross brace on the tower.  The cross braces are held
in by only TWO bolts.  Since the cross members are tilted at an angle that means that the safety lanyard
would naturally slide to the lowest point.  So if I fell most of the force is hitting ONE bolt.
4 foot of falling and all of your weight (life) on one bolt, scary huh?


I'll start at the base of the tower here.  This is some heavy angle iron 
that I purchased at a scrap yard.  I took it to work and had my favorite maintence man use the lathe to cut some oval notches in this one and the one at the top of the tower.  You can see how I added a nut on the top bolt between the tower and the angle iron so that there is no angular stress (bending moment) on the bottom tower bolt.

Here you can see how the bottom is attached.  I am using an aluminum turnbuckle.  It doesn't have to be heavy duty since it is only to tension the cable and not actually hold any physical weight.  I am temporarily using a climbing rated carabiner until I procure a good stainless steel oval or the like.  I only have two cable locks, but then again, this is only the tension side, not the fall arrest side.

Here is a front shot of the bottom of the tower.  The base piece is held n place by two bolts.  The bottom bolt is actually one of the main tower leg bolts.

This is the Lad-Saf safety arrest device.  I purchased this one new off of ebay for a song!  It is designed (this one anyway) for steel core cable of a specific size.  It rides freely up the cable and mostly freely down unless it gets in a bind or weight is put on it then it locks down hard on the cable.

Here is a shot of the top of the tower.  The plate on top is held by 4 bolts, two smaller ones and two very large bolts.  All are grade 5.  The actual steel core cable was purchased from a company that makes cabling for tow trucks.  The top is secured with a latching hook and high pressure aluminum locks on the cable.  Same stuff that pulls cars and trucks out of bad spots.  This cable will, of course, have to be replaced from time to time unless I switch to stainless steel or galvanized aircraft cable.

To give you an idea of the size of the bolts (I can't remember which size I installed, heh) the mast is 1.9" OD.

Nice shot up the tower following the cable up.  Usually I have a tennis ball about half way up on the cable as well.  Boy the aluminum sure does look pretty from here!