[TowerTalk] guying of 45' telescoping pole

[John & Peggy]

I have used two of the Radio Shack 40’ telescoping masts for about a year
and a half – one supporting a small Cushcraft 2-El. Tri-bander and rotor,
the other supporting a rotary dipole and rotor, along with various wire
antennas.  While these are not designed to support this kind of load, I have
them well guyed.  The beam mast is free standing – a 4’ piece of PVC pipe is
cemented in the ground.  I installed a bolt running through it down near the
bottom of the PVC and put a “Vee” notch in the bottom of the base section of
the mast that interlocks over the cross-bolt – just to keep the whole thing
from spinning.  I am using 4 guys at each ring, including the top.  The guys
I am using are ¼” Dacron rope – all pulled relatively taunt.  They provide a
little bit of “give” but seem to provide a lot of support.  I’ve watched
this thing dance around in some fairly strong storms, mostly straight-line
winds.  One mistake I made was trying to push it up without having enough
people available to keep it straight – a breeze just about took the whole
thing over.  Somehow, we got it stabilized enough to tie it off – but my
beam was not too many degrees off of being vertically polarized!  In your
case, even pushing up the 50’ mast by itself, I would have 3 or 4 helpers
supporting it by the guys as you push it up – The top two sections get
pretty whippy.

 

The other mast with the rotary dipole is bracketed to the garage peak at
about 18 feet, so I do not have as many guys on it, but I do have some.
Both of these antennas are light weight and the rotors I am using are
light-duty TV.

 

For attachment to the guy rings, I used small threaded links in the rings
and tied off to them – with the rope having some “give”, I think it takes
some of the strain off of the links, but guying with rigid wire might well
over stress them.  As I said, this isn’t an ideal application but so far I
have been lucky.  I  plan to put up a tower this Spring, and hopefully the
telescoping masts can be put to a more appropriate use.  I certainly
wouldn’t think your 1’ x 1’ panel array would present much of a problem, as
long as you have it guyed properly.  Good luck!

 

73’s,

 

John K0JJH