[Rover] Mast for rovering/portable operations

[Phil Lefever]

At 08:59 AM 5/2/02 -0400, you wrote:
>Has anyone tried the telescoping mast shown in the AES catalog? Shows to
>have various lengths up to about 40'.
>
>How well does it stand up to medium size antennas? Looking in the range of
>15' to 20' booms for 6 & 2.

Unless you guy this mast at several places I wouldn't try beams
that long on it. Aluminium masts are lightweight and amazingly
strong per pound but they flex a LOT under loads.

Our mast is about 30 feet tall and is made of telescoping aluminium
tubing. The bottom section is 2" 6061-T6 and the upper sections
telescope into the bottom. We used 10 foot sections to minimize
the number of joints. Our antenna array is 3el on 6m, 7el on 2m,
5el on 222, 16el on 432 and 23 el on 1296. We have found this
mast to be VERY marginal for this setup. Our total antenna weight
is about the same as one 6m antenna with a 20 foot boom length.

I can't imagine using antennas that large for rovering. For portable
operation it makes more sense but still too big for that commercial
mast.

73

Phil, KB0NES
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