Statics Experiments on an Elastic Catenary

A scale model of a top level guy wire of a 213 m (700 ft) tall radio navigation tower was constructed and tested. The horizontal and vertical components of the guy wire base tension were measured at a variety of wire stress levels and were found to be an average of 2.5% below the values predicted by theory from the equations of the elastic catenary. The difference between the measured and theoretical values ranged from +1.5% to −5.9%.