A SIMPLE PLASTIC MAST

A very simple but effective way of making a mast you want to do a lot of experiments with without lowering in and can be made in a day.....

You can buy reinforced plastic square section used for the main central support for conservatory's it is about 6" or 150mm across and you can buy very long lengths indeed.... Make a square wood box that just fits outside the bottom of the mast (not too tight). Concrete this box into the ground where your mast is required but first making sure you can place four tie ropes at an angle from the top of the mast to ground fixing points... wait a day.... make or buy a 8" pulley mine was nylon... cut two slots vertically down the mast at the top the width of the pulley and cut out so that the pulley fully fits into the cutout.... A long fixing bolt or nylon rod will be required to go through the center of the pulley and fix inside the mast.... Make a 10" square plate at least 5mm thick drill a 5mm hole near each corner for the nylon ropes.... Glue or fix this plate on the top of the mast and over the top of the pulley... Wait at least a day to set... Now we need to make the thing that hold the Antenna and I made a cradle out of two bits of plastic 2 foot long by 10" wide and fitted 6 fiberglass rods across the two plates such that they was a reasonable tight fit straddling the mast.... this should be adjusted to slid up and down the mast but take care not to damage the mast otherwise tight spots will be found.... Thread a Nylon rope from the cradle up through the pulley and back down the mast to other suitable pulleys you can buy and that's it.. The rest is left up to your inventiveness how you make it turn or be fixed if its a repeater you are using..... about £50/60...... This will stand strong winds and gusts up to 80mph without any problem and you can lower the antenna during such times..... G3RFL

This was a Mast used for an EMC test site I made and if you look you can see the cradle about 1 metre up off the ground.....................