September 2024 – Ham Radio Adventures with N1SPW

Trailer Hitch Antenna Mast Mount

My heavy duty, “Drive-On”, mast mount is universal. It can be used with any type of vehicle. Those of you that own a vehicle with a trailer hitch, maybe interested in my hack of a trailer hitch flag-pole mount.

I ordered a trailer hitch flag-pole mount from Amazon. These devices are designed to hold a flag-pole. This particular unit has a 2.3″ diameter. I had a requirement that the size of the pipe had to be larger that 2.25″, due to the large rubber caps on my TN07 telescoping mast.

Without an insert, the flag-pole mount pipe is too large for both my TN07 and DX Commander masts. I discovered a 2″ PVC pipe fits into the flag-pole mount perfectly. The outside diameter of the pipe is 2.3″ (@60 mm). The inside diameter is 2″ (@50 mm).

I cut a length of the 2″ PVC pipe to 36″. I painted it with Rustoleum paint from a rattle can.

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Custom Built Drive-On Mast Support

I am a big fan of vertical antennas – especially for POTA activations. Recently, I decided to deploy “Tennessee Walt’s” world-famous EFHW TennTenna (Search Ebay for ‘TennTenna’) on 20M.

The antenna driven element for 20M is about 33′, trimmed to the lowest SWR. This requires a 10M mast to get the wire fully extended.

I own two 10M fiberglass telescoping antenna masts. One from TN07 , and the other from DX Commander in the UK. The TN07 is super heavy-duty and virtually indestructable. The DX Commander is lighter, thinner, but also quite rugged.

One drawback of the TN07 is its use of large rubber caps on each end. The diameter of the caps are 5.5cm (2.2″). This means when the bottom cap is in place, the mast will not fit into a 2″ pipe. The DX Commander uses a threaded cap on the bottom, which does not increase the overall diameter of the mast. It fits into a 2″ pipe.

When I went looking for a “drive-on” flagpole mount to hold my masts, I was surprised at how flimsy most of them are. They were also too short (length-wise), most being about 15″. This puts the mast dangerously close to the vehicle, which can cause problems in high-wind conditions.

So, I set out to build my own.