[MLB-WIRELESS] Cheap(?) 15mtr Telescopic masts

[Dan Flett]

> Hah!
> 
> This'd only happen if you weren't happy with 12mtrs..
> 
> Surely 12mtrs is enough for everyone :-)

Yeah well, due to over-enthusiasm, the first mast burned down, fell over
and sank into the swamp.  But the second mast stayed up! (at 12 Metres).

A word of advice to everyone using these masts - each 3 metre segment
you add makes it exponentially more difficult to put up.  12 metres is
very difficult with 5 people to put up.  With the gear I was trying to
put on top of it, 15 metres was a disaster waiting to happen.  The thing
that fooled me into a false sense of security was that two people can
actually put these things up to 15 metres with no guys on a calm day,
and it looks like it'll be easy to put antennas on.  Wrong!  Once you
put gear on them, they wanna bend over every chance they get - the more
gear the worse it is.

They need to be fully supported through the whole lift.  I used 3 ropes
attached to the top and fed them through fixed eye-holes on the ground -
the eye-holes give the person holding the rope a mechanical advantage
against the vertical mast.  The 3 rope-holders then just feed out the
rope as the mast goes up.

Make no mistake - you can't put these masts up with a half-assed effort.
You need to be organised and mechanically capable.

If you're going to use less than the whole 15 meters, discard the
thinnest sections first - the lower sections are thicker and have more
strength.

A 12 metre mast requires a building permit in many areas.  However, you
might get away without one if you just ask all your adjoining neighbours
nicely.  I knocked all their doors - including those adjoining the back
fence - and showed them the picture from the Telomast instruction
leaflet.  None of them had a problem with it.

Finally, if you've built yourself a you-beaut home-brew PoE AP-in-a-Box,
don't put it up a mast that's going to require 5 or more people to put
up and bring down.  Consumer-quality APs have a tendency to hang,
especially in extreme temperatures, and you can't do much about it if
it's stuck up a 12 metre mast.  You'll be hosting lots of
mast-lowering-then-raising barbeques if you do.  I recommend placing
active circuity within arms reach, although I believe Peter and Vaskos
run amps on their masts.  Amps are probably more reliable than APs
though.

Happy mast-raising!

Dan

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