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Re: [TowerTalk] Small mast advice

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Small mast advice
From: jimlux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 17:12:25 -0800
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 11/10/20 4:50 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist wrote:


On 11/10/2020 3:40 PM, Ross Tucker wrote:

the RV park, she can't lay concrete or have excessive guying. I know this

Get one of those base mounts that your drive your vehicle on top
of.  That is just about as good as concrete for this purpose
and the RV park can't say any thing.

For guying, "bracket it" to the RV with guy wires that
run along the roof of the RV then down the sides.  Again,
the RV park can't say any thing about these, and they
will be at the roof height of the RV.



If your RV has a roof rack or a ladder, then you can use a ratchet strap or similar from that to the mast.

You can develop significant wind loads, so actually, the wheel on top of a plate thing is great, because it has a well defined failure - the mast falls over, but doesn't rip the rack off your roof.

I was working on "rapid field masts" with my VW Passat a while ago, and I quickly found out that putting a mast up 15-25 ft, with a bit of antenna on top and you can exceed the 50-60 lbs the rack can take as a lateral load.

It's because there's a nice lever arm (5 ft to car roof rack, 20 ft to antenna, gives 4:1 advantage.. ). On your RV it will be better.

I've also built antenna mounts that hook into the hitch socket.

one thing to think about - a larger diameter aluminum tube is stronger than a small diameter steel pipe, and a lot lighter. It's sort of a tradeoff between storage space and wrestling it around. 15-20 ft of steel fence top rail is a chore to move.

I've been pretty happy with the 40 foot collapsible carbon fiber masts, and using them up to 20 ft with a moderately heavy thing on the top. But they are flexible.

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