On April 6th, Mike (K6MYC) was lowering his tower to replace the rotator. This is a crank-up and tilt-over tower with positive pull-down cables, and maintenance was being done in good weather with no significant wind. Mike had the tower lowered, and tilted over at about 30 degrees. He stopped and stood away to one side a few feet to make certain he was clearing nearby obstacles, and heard a rapid succession of loud pops...and the tower fell to the ground, destroying all the antennas (there were many) and bending the top section when the tower mass hit a high spot on the ground.

The long and short of this story is you can never be too careful with towers...despite all reasonable precautions, he was almost killed by the raising fixture. Had he been standing beside or behind it when this happened, or under the leaning tower, that would have been it.

What happened was the large bolt holding the bottom of the raising fixture to the tower base sheared off, and the bottom of the raising fixture flew out behind the tower. Had it struck anyone, it would have been like being hit by a speeding car.

Mike asked for this photo of the aftermath to be posted here: