I recently purchased a 10-meter Spiderbeam fiberglass pole for use on POTA activations. Last week, I set it up for the first time.
The first problem I faced was finding a place to set it up. I had some idea of how to do this because a couple of years ago I went out with Thom, W8TAM, who has one of these poles. What we did then was to lash it to a post.
Unfortunately, there was no such post like that where we were. So, we improvised. We did a quick-and-dirty lashup to one of the picnic tables. See photo at right. For good measure, we tied it to a nail sticking out of the shelter about ten feet up. To secure the base—a little bit, anyway—we pounded in a couple of tent stakes.
This certainly wasn’t the best installation, but the weather was nice, and we were only planning to be there for 2-3 hours. Once we got it set up, we didn’t have any problems at all. In fact, the antenna that we hung from it—my 66-ft. doublet fed with twisted pair wire—seemed to work very well. I’m guessing that this was the result of it being up higher than usual, and that band conditions were good that day.
Even so, I wanted to find a better way to set up this mast. So, when a link to a reddit post, How do you guys mount telescoping poles for temporary portable use, hit my inbox, I clicked on it. One of the commenters there, linked to the YouTube video below.
The Fastest and Easiest Way to Deploy a Fiberglass Mast
This video shows a very simple—and inexpensive—way to set up a fiberglass mast. This should work very well for most POTA ops, especially if you’re only planning on using it for a day or less.
Version 2 of The Fastest and Easiest Way to Deploy a Fiberglass Mast
But, wait, there’s more!
This video shows a variation on a theme. In this video, W4AOX uses paracord instead of cargo straps to set up the PVC pipe support, and instead of a hose clamp, he simply drills a couple of holes in the pipe and ties the paracord to it.
All of these videos show the fiberglass pole fitting into a PVC pipe. My Spiderbeam pole came in a holder, and I’m wondering if I can’t just clamp the cargo straps or paracord to the holder instead of buying a separate piece of pipe. One possible problem is that the holder isn’t that tall, so maybe
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