Spiderbeam 18m (60') Fibreglass Pole

Especially developed for successful portable low-band activities on 80 and 160m!

Imagine building a quick portable 80m 4-square array that you can put up within less than one hour...   A single person can easily "walk up" the pole within a few minutes. 

 

Spiderbeam 18m (60ft) fibreglass poles are built very similar to our well proven 12m HD fibreglass poles, yet carefully designed to maintain low weight and perfect balance.
The pole starts out very rugged at the bottom (73mm diameter / 2mm wall thickness) and still has 40mm diameter / 1.5mm wall thickness at 10m height! The upper sections are slim and light (1mm wall thickness), preventing the pole from becoming top-heavy and keeping it perfectly balanced. A special reinforcing winding technique - several layers of fibreglass are wound in alternating direction (criss/cross winding) - provides greatly increased lateral and linear strength

These poles are perfect for building all kinds of wire antennas, especially 80/160m wire GP or inverted L antennas. They can also easily support temporary lightweight 1 Element Quad or Delta loops for 40-10m, and dipoles for all bands, especially when used with open wire feedline. (Most baluns would be somewhat heavy). 4-6 poles could be used to build lightweight beams for 40 or 80m (...who is going to build one for 160? :-)).

The best (and cheapest) wire to use for building such wire antennas (verticals, loops, dipoles etc.) is AWG 18 (= 1mm diameter) enamelled copper wire or similar.

Pole installation:
One person can easily "walk up" the pole by pressing the bottom against a rock, tree, car or ground anchor, or having a second person hold it. Once the pole is in vertical position, it can easily be moved around.
Fix the bottom to a ground anchor and attach guy lines at 2 levels. Thin fishing monofilament (1mm diameter) or 2mm Kevlar rope is very suitable for guy lines.
To complete the installation we strongly recommend using our rubber padded stainless steel clamps to safely secure the telescoping elements from slipping down. For a pole of this large size, clamps are a better solution than using tape only.

Guy belt for 18m Fibreglass Pole

These strong guy belts are an ideal method for quickly attaching guy ropes to the pole. The belts are very flexible and lightweight and transfer the forces into the mast over a very large area, thus preventing damage of the fibreglass tubes.