Well whilst I am still waiting for the mast that is coming with the HexBeam from Poland I need to get something ready for the summer. I just can’t wait any longer.

So I have pushed the Moonraker 15M masts into operation.

You can get a guy kit from Nevada which, although designed for Spider poles works equally as well with the Moonraker one.

I tried it with two sets of guys and it was fine until it came to trying to lift the antenna on it. The problem is that the mast sections are 2.5m long so you have to be up a ladder, or on top of a car to push them up and you have to have something stabilising the bottom section.

I added a third aluminium guy section, without the bearing, on the bottom section and that solved the issue.





I made up the guys with the same braid i used for the home mast and added the neat stainless steel connections to the ends.





I tried lifting it with just the two guys but no go.



So a third on the bottom section stabilised it all. Pity you have to have ladders to get to the top though.



Here are some shots of it up at about 10M. It did oscillate a bit in the wind but I had a couple of QSO’s on 2W on the KX3 which proved that it works.