"Tarmo Tammaru" wrote in message
...

"Gary Boyer" wrote in message
...
I am looking for some suggestions on putting up a 30-40 foot mast or
push
up
pole...it does not have to be the fiberglass poles that you see
advertised...the mast would be used for an inverted vee 80 meter antenna
only...also, how do you bracket to the house or how would you attach it
to
something similar...thanks...Gary...K8BY


I have done this with Radio Shack TV mast house brakets. Be sure to get
the
kind that allows the pipe to extend all the way to the ground. If the mast
is bigger than 1-3/8, you may have to drill new holes in the braket and
get
bigger U bolts; I got muffler clamps at an auto supply store for that.
Install 2 brakets, one as high as possible, and one about half way down.
Unless your house is very tall, you will still have to guy the top.

My house is 23' at the peak... I don't use guys (yet).
I have a house with vinyl siding, so I had to fabricate
a mount that goes off the roof, not the side of the eave.
Basically, it's two 2x4s, about 3' long, lag-bolted to
the surface of the roof about 18" apart at the peak
of the roof, parallel to each other and sticking out
over the side of the house about 6". Then there's a
1x4 lag-bolted across the ends of the 2x4s, with a
U-bolt through it. The mast extends 8' above this
point, with a pulley/rope system to raise and lower
an 80m inverted vee. Push the mast into the ground
as far as you can before tightening the U-bolt, prevents
loosening up later.

I'm using 17ga chain-link top rail, which is one gauge lower
than antenna mast (16ga) and cheaper. I used a galvanised
bracket to be the yardarm for the pulley... it's the same
piece used to hold the end of the chain link to the pole,
about 6" long doubled strap. Counting the rope and pulley,
about $30 in the whole mast setup (minus dipole/etc).

I have used a roof-peak mast mount with good results...
this is the tilt-over bracket that has a mast pocket built in.
With one good set of guys, you can go up 20' from the peak
with not much problem. For this kind of installation I would
not recommend going with the cheaper hardware... use
the 16ga pieces and guy in the middle of the second
section. This route is more expensive, but preferable...
it's strong enough to support some other antennas as
well as the dipole.

If you feed with balanced line, you should take pains that
the feedline is not rattling against the mast... a piece of
string tied to the fence and the middle of the line works
for me. Thankfully, the shack's window is right below
the peak I'm using. There's a ground rod there, of course,
with the mast ground attached below the shack ground.
__
Steve
KI5YG
..