I’m gradually swapping out any aluminium antenna poles for steel. Clearly these are very heavy, particularly with an antenna on top.
The trick is to use V bolts (like U clamps but in a V shape) and not to use saddle clamps because the pole will not slide easily past the U bolt saddle clamp.
What you will need:
- A simple pulley from eBay (I found one claiming 180Kg) and swapped out the nasty nylon string with 550 Paracord
- An 8mm eye bolts
- A selection of shackles
- I drilled two 8mm holes in the pole: One at the very bottom and one just over half-way up.
To lift the pole into position, I used a home-brew base hinge and connected the pole to the bottom pulley just over half way along the length of the pole (so that it wasn’t top heavy).
I connected the top of the pulley system to the top T&K brackets and gently pulled the pole up.
Once more-or-less into position, I added the V bolts on Nyloc nuts and left lots of slack in the threads. I re-arranged the pulley so that the bottom of the pole would be pulled up inside the V bolts, pulling against the top K bracket.
I used only one eye-bolt and moved it between the mid-point and the bottom accordingly.
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