basketballantennabase

Basketball Antenna Base

Surplus Portable Basketball Backboard Base & Mast as a Tower Base

A portable basketball backboard, mast, and base can be utilized as the basis for a temporary or permanent antenna mast.

1. The base unit is polyethlene type plastic and holds 375 pounds of sand, or can be filled with water for temporary use in non-freezing environments. This makes an excellent anchor for a vertical mast.
2. The vertical mast in most units is made up of three 4-inch diameter sections of steel tube. Since they can be disassembled into 3-foot long sections, this makes your antenna base into a transportable unit for field day or other temporary ham radio installation.
3. The plastic base includes a pair of small wheels which come into ground contact when you tip the base by 75 or 80 degrees from vertical. This allows you to move the assembled unit to desired locations.
4. The vertical metallic mast is insulated from ground by the plastic base container. This then could allow the vertical part to be fed with an L-network so that it operates as a vertical antenna. Add some radials and it might work fairly well.
5. An antenna rotator could be installed on the mast section if you want to use this as the base for a small Yagi or Cubical-Quad.
6. Smaller diameter mast sections could be fastened to the original vertical section and stabilized with guy wires, or with pre-built dipole antenna wires. This might make the basis for an all-band field day portable antenna farm.

As children outgrow or loose interest in these portable basketball backboard units, you see them sitting idly along the curb, lying in back yards, and being taken to the local landfill. It does not take much imagination to see this as the base for a portable antenna mast.