Has anyone made a portable whip antenna (manpack-esque) from aluminum tent poles?



I've seen some people (Paul Signorello - W0RW, etc.) have some success using a simple 8ft whip antenna for pedestrian mobile ops, and thought some aluminum jointed poles might be a handy material to make one.



The goal would be to use it with the FT-817 and T1 tuner for a quick set-up antenna. Throw out a counterpoise, hit tune, and roll.



Yes, yes, I know a doublet, dipole, etc. would work better, but this is just for a fun experiment.



There a company in WA, Tent Pole Technologies that sells custom made poles at reasonable prices.



Thoughts?

You're probably going to need some way of making a better electrical connection between them.

A slip-in fit between two pieces of aluminum is a sure-fire recipe for erratic SWR on transmit, and lots of random noise on receive.

I believe Buddipole has a shock-corded takedown whip made like tent poles.

Alpha antenna have the Ez military model that may fit your need.
I have two of their antenna and they are great quality. Never use the Ez model so can't comment on it but eHam have few good review.

Ez Military

I have used the Buddipole Shock Cord Adjustable Whip.
You can use this for a FULL SIZED vertical down as low as 20 meters, and with a coil, use it on 30 and 40 meters.

The problem with using tent poles has already been noted: the electrical connection between them. I am sure you could polish the ends that fit together to make better contact and it very well might work but I don't think it would be reliable long term. If you already own the poles, it would be worth playing around with, but I personally wouldn't buy them for that purpose. Don't forget that you can make a vertical out of wire and suspend it from a tree or a light post or anything of sufficient height. However, I do understand that this won't always work depending on where you are. I lived in the desert for a long time and there simply were not trees to suspend stuff from. In that case, you would need something like you are thinking about.

Another option is something like the S9 V ertical Antenna. This is nothing but a wire vertical inside of a telescoping fiberglass mast.

Another possible solution would be to use fiberglass chimney brush extension rods.



They're available in 3, 4 or 6 foot lengths on ebay or Amazon. Lowes also stocks the 4' version for around 8 bucks, IIRC.

Since they're non-conductive fiberglass, they make it pretty easy to build physically shortened "linearly loaded" verticals, by wrapping wire in a spiral around them - Think HF rubber duckey.

The threaded end fittings should make for pretty decent electrical connections.

Use automotive hose clamps to connect your radiator wire to the end fittings.

Biggest disadvantage is that they're too floppy to be self-supporting beyond 16 feet or so.

Use a telescoping fiberglass pole with a wire ran up through it

The military antennas use a metal cord for connecting all the sections, so do you suppose that's how they get around the inconsistent mates between sections?

Telescoping fiberglass fishing poles are light and you can vary the height.

I've already done the fiberglass telescoping thing, but I want to try the aluminum jointed pole approach for the sake of trying it...

I went down this road and ended up using a 17' telescoping whip

Chameleon makes a folding whip.  Not exactly what your talking about but I've used the fiber glass tent poles as a mast to get my N9TAX J pole up in the air.

I had an old tent from hell with aluminum poles. Took about 2 hours of drinking to get it up. It had several sections about 30 inches long one side was tapered to fit in the end of the other. I made a 2 meter dipole with the first section using a 3 way pvc electrical box. Then add section for every band up to 20 meters. I also have wire cut to length for 40 and 80 meters. The 3/4 inch pvc stuck on the bottom hole fits perfect in fiberglass surplus poles end. SWR is fine. I hold it together with a cinch pin at the joints. It all fits in the tent bag.

I would just buy a cheap AT-271 on ebay and be done.