Institution of Lighting Engineers Technical Report No.

7
High Masts for Lighting and CCTV 2000 Edition.
BS 5950-1:2000 (for tubular poles)
IS 802 (Part 1 / Sec. 2):1992

Towers, which may be of three or four sides or a single cantilevered

tubular pole, are assembled by combining a series of standard face, plan,
hip, and cross-arm panels. The tower profile is defined by giving the
height of individual panels and the width at bend points. All other
widths are obtained by interpolation. The range of standard panels is
being regularly increased with over 100 different panel types available at
present. A number of the standard panels are parameterised so that the
user may readily modify the configuration.
If a suitable standard panel is not available the system accepts user-
defined panels (UDP). While these require much more data than a
standard panel, they allow the system to be used for virtually any tower
configuration. A UDP may consist of anything from a few members that
make up half a face panel to a full three-dimensional section of the
tower.
The result of the tower building process is a complete MStower data file,
Job.mst, where Job is the MStower job name.
The loading module of MStower computes loads due to self-weight, ice,
and wind on the tower. As well as computing wind loads on the bare
tower the program is able to take account of a wide range of ancillary
items found on communication towers.
Ancillaries are classified into the following categories:
Linear ancillaries, normally within the body of the tower and
consisting of items such as ladders, feeders and wave-guides.
Face ancillaries, attached to the face of the tower and consisting
of small items such as minor antennae, gusset plates and
platforms.
Large ancillaries, mounted out from the face of the tower and
consisting of large dishes whose wind resistance is significant
compared with that of the structural members of the tower.
Resistance. A group of ancillaries may be described by their
wind resistance over a height range of the tower.
Insulators, located between the segments of multi-segment
guys.
Ancillary libraries containing data describing the physical and drag
characteristics of a wide range of antennae types are provided with
MStower. The libraries are plain text files and may be easily added to by
users. For a dish antenna the library would typically include its diameter,
mass, location of center of gravity, surface area that may be coated with

2 1:Introduction MStower V6.2