AmateurRadio.com

If you read this blog and you haven’t seen it yet, you don’t have a pulse or you’ve been busier than Lindsay Lohan’s legal team this week and haven’t read any email, blogs, tweets, or forums.  This video of a tower climber ascending a 1700 foot tower has been making its way on the Intertubes:

http://www.youtube.com/v/uhtgsAXmz7U?fs=1&hl=en_US

The narrator is friendly enough and sounds more refined than many of the roughneck tower guys I’ve met and worked with, but I have to question the brains-to-balls ratio of the climber.  While it may not be required to be clipped in at all times, it’s a very good idea, especially at the transitions.  I can’t fathom why a climber wouldn’t clip a lanyard to the tower when pulling themselves on to the very top.  He even putzes around untethered when standing next to the beacon light, digging out a carabiner.  The other climber comes up next to him and clips in before he does.  It would take only one gust of wind or an unexpected move or slip up by the other climber to kill the camera equipped climber.

You can climb untethered and gain some time, but what use is an extra 10 or 15 minutes one day for losing perhaps 40 or 50 years of your life?