Talk:Warsaw radio mast

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Warsaw radio mast was a good article, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

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Sources from the internet say no-one was killed during the accident.

The (very few) articles I've found in english say 3 dead 12 injured, but I suspect they're all regurgitating the same source, n-th hand. There does seem to be some difference about the date on which the tower fell. -- Finlay McWalter 23:58, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)


I looked at the Polish Press Agency (PAP) news wire. Their Aug. 10, 1991 "WORLD-TALLEST AERIAL MAST COLLAPSES" account states "COLLAPSED WITHOUT CAUSING ANY CASUALTIES BUT ONLY MATERIAL LOSSES ON THURSDAY EVENING" Thursday evening pinpoints the date as Aug. 8. A later article from October 15, 1993 reports that the Plock provincial court sentenced 3 employees of the Mostostal Co. of Zabrze, Katowice province (who were renovating the tower when it collapsed) to 2.5, 2, and 2 years of prison for "unwillingly causing the collapse" of the tower.

In regards to "In 1995 the Polish government proposed rebuilding the tower, but this was successfully opposed by local residents." The Government decided to restore the tower as early as April 1992 [PAP News Wire, April 7, 1992, NEWS, 106 words, RADIO MAST IN GABIN TO OPERATE AGAIN]

-- Ando228 11:30, 24 Feb 2005

Contents

[edit] Height Conflict

This article says 646, List of the world's tallest structures says 648.38. Which is correct? -- SGBailey 09:23, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistency in units

This sentence:

it was 646 meters (2,120 feet) tall and weighed 420 short tons (380 t).

puts metric first in the first part, and imperial first in the second part. That is inconsistent. For consistency, will put metric first in second part two, esp. since Poland is a metric-using country (as is most of the world).

Why did it collapse? This is the sort of thing that belongs in the article. Secretlondon 15:54, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The mast "was the tallest structure ever built" - needs to be reworded no? The Petronas Towers etc have also had this title no? Its all inconsistent with the World's tallest structures article which links at the start of this article. Or does anyone care? max rspct 28 June 2005 14:26 (UTC)


[edit] Inconsistency in dates

The tower collapsed in 1991 necessitating the construction of the Solec Kujawski longwave transmitter in 1989? Did they construct a time machine while they were at it? Jeff Worthington 8 August 2005

[edit] Very useful

I use this in games that require random knowledge. It's very fun, but it's become predictable. haha --KelticK{Talk} 21:17, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Um

"On August 8, 1991, the mast collapsed at 16:00 UTC because of a mistake in exchanging the guys on the highest stock of the mast. Fortunately nobody was killed or injured because other workers had left the site two hours earlier."

What does "guy" mean in the first sentence? Also, "other workers"? Who were the original workers? Is "guys" referring to people (in that case, the sentence is written so colliquially I don't even understand it). Somebody who knows what this is supposed to say, please rewrite these sentences. -VJ 23:20, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm guessing it means guy-ropes, like you use to anchor a tent to the ground. Obviously, they're not rope though :) I think they're the right engineering term, so they're probably best left as they are. Annihilatenow 12:31, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Lots of additional info

I was collecting info on WRM long time before there was a wiki article available. Few years actually. So, someone (or myself if nobody cares, PM me) should include that Mostostal Zabrze was the company that erected the mast.

The height of the mast really is 646.38m. Buy a Guinness book of world records. Actually, the height varied with temperature. Hmm...

Also, here is the list of things that are different from wiki data, but found in encyclopedias (yes, the thick paper books): 1) the mass of the mast was 550 000 kilograms (and then it says 541 t - someone please explain this); also 606 t is mentiones in one american encyclopedia.

Not necessarily. English sources tend to introduce more and more errors as they copy data between themselves. It can be partially attributed to non-metric tonnes used in some English-speaking countries. One Polish source I know cites 420 metric tonnes, so far I don't have a reason to not believe them.

2) the dates - the work started July 1970, mast was completed in 18 Jul 1974. and put into operation on 22 Jul 1974

Nope, Polish sources state that the mast was completed on 18 May 1974, again probably bad translation. Also it seems highly unlikely that just 4 days of testing would be enough.

3) the radio was called Radio Jedynka

Nope, it was called "Program Pierwszy Polskiego Radia", sometimes abbreviated to "Program I PR". It means "The first programme of the Polish Radio". "Jedynka" is the unofficial name, used mainly by its listeners for simplicity ("Jedynka" means "Number one").

4) the time of collapse could be between 6 and 7 PM

5) the width of the mast is definitively more than 4.8m. I'll upload a photo soon which shows a worker on the mast. I came with 6.7m. Well, maybe the guy was a midget, but I strongly dislike the idea.

6) the mast had a ladder, too.

7) the way the thing collapsed - it first bent, then broke in half, and then the upper half went straight to the base after which the lower part leaned and collapsed too (don't know on which side, though)

8) the transmitters survived. apparently.

True, they were in a separate building.

9) the fault - Special committee decided it was Mostostal Zabrze, which built, and maintained the mast. On the defendants bench sat 3 people, the construction coordinator, technical guy and chief of one of Mostostals divisions that built the mast. For causing the catastrophe, the first of these was sentenced to 2.5 years, the other 2 for two years.

10) In September 1995 the Polish government was set to rebuild the mast, but it was never rebuilt due to local protests, which claimed that the waves sent out by the mast are bad for their health.


Also, I have a higher resolution and noncropped version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Konstantynow1.jpg so I'll replace it.


If no one replies, I'll add the info above in short time. The info is valid because it is not found on the Internet.

It proves nothing that you found it in printed sources. They are equally inaccurate, for the reasons cited above. Seriously, the more people involved in the communication, the more distorted it gets, so I think the Polish sources are more accurate. If you want I can translate anything for you.

It's good to have such great summary about this cool building. The tallest structure ever. :-)

06:30, 22 Jun by Endimion17

You have uploaded multiple photos, which don't belong to you, yet you claim GFDL license on them. This is a violation of the copyright. Please withdraw those, or change their license accordingly. --Wanted 16:01, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Further information (in Polish)

On http://radiopolska.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6321 there are many further information in Polish, I believe also concerning the nowadays fate of the site, where it stood. It would be a good idea, if smeone who understands the Polish language can analyze it and add them to the page!

[edit] How were the used guys insulated?

As one can read on http://www.waniewski.de/id19.htm in German the classical design for guy insulations at mast radiators, which consists of guys divided by insulators in multiple sections is inecconomic for very tall constructions, because the regular maintenance of the required voltage arresters fixed on the insulators of the guys is difficult and the insulators have to be designed for voltages from static electricity, which can be much higher than the voltages which occir from pure transmitter operation. So at huge masts often guys are used, which are fixed by an insulator toward the mast and grounded at the other end by a coil, which put the guy out of tune for the transmission frequency ( at some special cases as at the main mast of Bodenseesender the guy was grounded directly, but this is almost not possible). Also guy constructions are in use, which are divided by insulators in multiple sections near the mast, while the part away from the mast is grounded at the basements by a coil or in some special cases also directly. So there is the question: how were the guys of Warsaw Radio Mast insulated?

  • by insulators which divided them in multiple sections
  • by fixing them with an insulator at the mast and by grounding them over a coil (perhaps even at some levels directly) at their anchor basements
  • or by a construction, which consisted at sections near the mast divided by insulators in multiple sections and a section farer away from the mast, which is grounded via a coil (or even directly) at the anchor basements.

The available pictures show not the guys in whole length in the necessary resolution to find out exactly the way how they were insulated. So eiher pictures of the guys, their basements or papers, which described the guy constructions should be found out, in order to answer this question. I suppose they were divided by insulators in multiple sections close to the mast and the section farer away from the coil was grounded via a coil (or directly) at the basements of the guys, but I may be wrong! I think the interesting question how its guys were insulated requires further investigations!

[edit] Some remaining questions

There are some remaining questions, which can be found perhaps in http://radiopolska.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6321

  1. what happened with the transmitter devices? Were they scrapped or put into a museum? ( Two 1000 kilowatt transmitters were surely interesting for some museums!)
  2. were some parts of the destroyed mast saved and put to a museum or similiar institution?
  3. what is the former transmitter building used for?
  4. are remanents of the basements still on the site? This is very presumable, because such concrete objects are costly to remove! For example the basements of the mast of Deutschlandsender Herzberg/Elster are still there! Why should they have been removed in the case of Warsaw radio mast? I believe they were left as remember, but I may be wrong! If such remanents exist, pictures of them would be useful in the article.
  5. what is now on the site where the mast stood? Which is nowadays owner of the area? Is its access restricted or not?

[edit] Cancelled rebuilt plans

On [1] you can find more about the cancelled plans to rebuild it

[edit] Wrong Person

Jan Polak links to a footballer rather than the designer of the Warsaw radio mast.

[edit] Why ?

But why was it built as the tallest structure in the first place ? Were there technical reasons for doing so, or did they just want the highest record ? -- Beardo 22:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah- why did they build such a big mast? What did they broadcast from it that needed to get all the way to the US?--CharlieP 23:50, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
The answer is quite simple. It was built to enlarge the area of fading-free reception. For this several measures are possible: one of them is an arrangement of several masts in a circle, which was used at Orlunda transmitter and requires much space. A solution not requiring so much space is a half-wave radiator. This is an antenna, which has a height of approximately the half wavelength of transmitted frequency. A half-wave radiator has a flater radiation pattern than a shorter antenna, e.g. a quater-wave radiator. This results that the area of fading-free reception around the mast is bigger than when using a shorter mast radiator. So high-power mediumwave broadcasting stations use in most cases half-wave radiators (for low-power statins their use make not much sense, because the signal is already very weak at the distance when fading occurs at night). However half-wave radiator for mediumwave can be easily realized, they are even for the lower end of the mediumwave band 280 metre tall. For the longwave broadcasting range, a half-wave radiator requires a mast height between 540 and 980 metres. As one easily can calculate, the half-wave length of 227 Khz (the frequency Warsaw Radio Mast was built) is 660 metres. Warsaw Radio Mast was 646 metre tall. Its height did not require the full height of half-wavelength, because the diametre of its construction enlengthened it electricially a bit, so not whole half-wavelength height was required. It was the only half-wave radiator built for longwave, because building masts taller than 540 metres is very expensive and surely not easy, especially if insulation is required. In opposite to Warsaw Radio Mast, the supertall masts in the USA are only carriers of antennas for FM- and TV-broadcasting and no mast radiators. Therefore they are all grounded. The enormous height of their antennas allow a far quasioptic wave propagation.

[edit] GA Delisted

Sorry guys, but there are no references at all listed at the bottom, (External links are to be used as outside links helpful to the reader, but don't count as references, see Wikipedia:External links) and the two or so links I saw inside the article aren't really enough to qualify this article as "Well-referenced". Homestarmy 02:50, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This is not to discourage you, but I would add that the prose could use some improvement. The lead is choppy and does not summarize the rest of the article well. Other parts have some problems: "The version of mistakes in the exchange of guys was confirmed by Jan Polak..." If directions or uses are unknown, maybe they don't need to be mentioned? I would suggest checking over WP:CITE and working on the prose a bit. Gimmetrow 20:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Check out this

All readers, which understand Polish should check the site http://jerzyjedrzejkiewicz.webpark.pl/str01/galerie/rcn/index_05.html !

[edit] Further pictures

[edit] Former 646 metre Mast Gabin

[edit] Basement of former 646 metre Mast Gabin

[edit] line for transmitting radio power from transmitter to mast

[edit] the directional radio tower

[edit] the transmitter

[edit] Building the 646 metre mast

[edit] Debris of collapsed mast


[edit] Nowadays state of the facility

By using http://212.244.179.188/website/Orto/viewer.htm it was possible to get high resoluted aerial photographs of the site. They show, that the transmitter building (including the directional radio tower), the helix building, the mast basement and the anchor basements are still there, see on http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=9783032

[edit] Check out this

Please check the information on http://jerzyjedrzejkiewicz.webpark.pl/str01/galerie/rcn/rcn_14.html

[edit] Appearance on postal stamps?

Were there ever printed postal stamps showing the mast? I believe "yes", because it was the tallest thing ever built, but I may be wrong.

[edit] Speculation

Moved the following rather speculative text from the main article. If anyone can confirm, then please put it back in (after a bit of rewording perhaps...) Chillysnow 22:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

"A tube was installed up the centre of the mast. This tube may have served as feeder for a middle-feeding of the radio frequency power in the mast. A middle-feeding of radio frequency power of the mast would have allowed grounding the mast at its base. This would have made its maintenance, the power supply to flight-safety lamps and the elevator and the planned installations of antennas at its top for VHF/UHF radio transmissions much easier."

[edit] Incorrect Information?

The article says it was the highest land based man-made structure until the advent of the Burj Dubai, however KVLY-TV mast is the current highest. Is this incorrect?

It is correct according to what it says here, and this may also be of interest. Hertz1888 (talk) 05:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is correct. Uranium grenade (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 14:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)