Masts ….

I’ve gone through a variety of masts since I have gotten into ham radio, specifically on the HF side so I wanted to try to provide a brief overview of what I have purchased and used and what I thought about each of them.

POTA33 – this was the first mast that I bought. It works well for an Efhw or other similar wire antennas but it doesn’t hold weight well and it bends over like a candy cane if you have any tension on the line (like with a sloper configuration). It’s a good portable option if you only wanted to use wire antennas, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. Buy

Collapsible 30’ Painters Pole – this is the 2nd mast that I bought. It was so much better than the pota33 for back yard work but doesn’t collapse nearly enough for portable ops. This doesn’t candy cane bend like the pota33 did and is a great option for a back yard wire antenna setups. I would definitely recommend this for a budget buy. Buy

Chameleon Porta Mast (25’) – this was the 3rd mast that I bought. I buried the pvc base in the ground and cemented it in and set it up and haven’t looked back. For this mast I also bought the topper piece and the roll over base. I liked this mast so much, I eventually bought a 2nd one. It holds weight well (I had a 20’ hex beam on one of them), holds up to the wind and is easy to collapse and expand. Buy

Intellitron 34’ Mast from Gigaparts – I bought this to replace the painters pole. It’s up and running now and my 40m efhw is hooked to it. It doesn’t bend as much as the painters pole does, but for the price, I’d recommend the painters pole over it. You can’t go wrong with either, but I wouldn’t say this is 4x better than the painters pole. Buy

Chameleon 34’ carbonfiber mast – this is what I got to replace the pota33 that I sold. It’s a nice portable option and it has a screw at the bottom that screws right into the chameleon ground spike. I’ve used this for many field setups and enjoy it, that said, it’s built for a wire antenna, that’s it. You’re not putting anything with weight on the top of this. Buy

Chameleon 16’ carbonfiber mast – this is the 16’ version of the one above. Great mast and has all of the same features of the 34’ model but collapses quite a bit smaller. I like this mast a ton. Buy

TN07 32’ mast – now this mast, this is a cool mast to have. It doesn’t collapse as small or weigh as little as the 34’ chameleon mast, but it’s definitely built a ton stronger and if you wanted to hang a transformer / feed point from it, 32’ in the air, it will handle it. I still have this and is a nice mast to being out for vehicle based portable ops. Buy