conventional prior art wind turbine tower there are some notable structural differences however returning briefly to fig1 the reader will observe how base 24 of pylon 14 attaches to foundation 12 even moderate wind forces place a very large bending moment on the interface between the base and the foundation as a result the attachment features must be made very strong in addition the foundation must resist the resulting overturning forces using only its mass it is typically a steel reinforced concrete pad the foundation must be made very large and u2014 with the escalating cost of concrete and steel u2014 this contributes substantially to the overall expense returning now to fig3 the reader will observe how the bases of the three legs 36 shown are widely separated if the outward angle of each leg is configured appropriately the forces placed on split foundation 38 will be primarily axial loads with little to no bending moment thus even though there are three separate foundations in the embodiment shown the volume of concrete required is substantially less than for the single large foundation shown in fig1 having received the information that the telescoping pylon is raised to its operational position after the nacelle is installed the reader may wish to know some examples of the types of mechanisms that could be used to perform the raising the present invention is in no way dependent upon the type of raising mechanism actually selected so the following examples should properly be viewed as two.