Stealth Zoom Up Masts

  Many of us live and work in areas where there are restrictions against putting up external antennas, and I've heard many solutions to this. In one case a ham operator in Canada bought an old truck and built an Andy Gump house on the bed, equipped it with a large deep cycle battery, an oil heater, and a light and operated form the town house parking lot. Most residents thought the truck looked far worse than any antenna he might put up. I am fortunate that the rear part of my town house has no visible exposure except to one neighbor. So I simply tried to integrate the mast and antenna into the decor by painting it to match the wrought iron. I constructed the mast from a standard 19' Radio Shack TV Mast. The idea was to convert this standard mast to a small zoom up mast that could be lowered during high winds and when adjustments to the resonators would be required. The mast must be supported at the base because there is no way to provide guy wires. The mast is supported by a pipe mount that is modified with PVC couplers that act as bearings. This permits the entire mast and antenna to rotate. The mast sits on a Radio Shack rotator that is bolted to the railing of the balcony as shown in the photo below. The upper portion of the mast supports the dipole formed from the Hustler whips and the tri-band resonators. The zoom up mast consists of two modified sections of the original mast with support pulleys mounted at the bottom and the top of the lower section. The upper section is slit nearly the full length to permit upper pulley support to pass along the slit. A nylon rope is threaded inside the mast sections and returns through a hole at the bottom of the lower section. Hamilton Tool in La Crescenta, CA cut the end pieces and the pulley supports from aluminum and slit in the upper section. These parts can be easily reproduced. Finally, I painted the mast flat black to match the balcony iron work. Because of the way this mast is supported, I would not advise placing a large Yagi or other antenna on this mast. I also advise lowering the upper section during high winds.

View of Tri-banded Dipole and 10m Vertical

Detail of Rotator

Detail of Mast Slit