Typically shaky cell-phone videos of communication tower demolitions were bested by six drones Saturday morning when a crew from Electronics Research Inc. (ERI) felled a 540-foot guyed tower in Norfolk, Virg.
Once the guy wires were cut, the bottom third of the tower built in the mid-1970s hit the ground and the rest fell within a radius of 200 feet.
As seen in the video, half of the tower fell onto the surrounding land, but some center sections did land in the water.
The drones, manned by Chesapeake-based DroneUp, captured videos of the collapse of the tower that has provided four decades of broadcasting music of WJOI-AM (1230) and rock ‘n’ roll station FM99 WNOR, which provided the demolition video.
A new 540’ tower will be erected in its place by Michigan-based Saga Communications, but the structure will have solid legs and not tubular legs that suffered from years of corrosion due to its rust-prone environment.
