Here is a clip of the final moments of the tower raising. You can’t see the cables, but the jeep winch cable goes through a block anchored to the tree in front of the jeep (’56 Willys M38 A-1) and back to a cable system called a Spanish Burton (3:1) on the other side of the tower. The rope in the foreground that goes to the top of the tower, and takes a turn around the Russian olive at bottom right, I am holding to snub the motion of the tower as it tips the last bit under the force of gravity. The A-frame at the right is the derrick I built to get the thing up high enough for the cable system to get a good bite to lift it the rest of the way. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of listening to me talk about this for the last ten or twelve years, this tower (38′ 4″) will hold 6000 watts of solar panels up near the treetops. The spiral staircase was part of an opera set at the Santa Fe Opera. We will be putting up on the website a much more detailed little movie about the entire tower process. Stay tuned!
