Mastrant antenna rope

[N0NB]

Over the years I've used various types and grades of rope for wire antenna supports. The lifetime of whatever I was using varied considerably from months for cheap poly rope found at discount stores (needed in a pinch) to years for cotton and plastic clothes line. As for the past 25 years or so I considered my antenna installations as rather temporary I was satisfied with what ever life I received. Besides the limited lifetime of rope available locally to wherever I was living, the various ropes had varying degrees of stretch.

After having my fan dipole collapse about a year ago due to using cheap poly rope, I started looking for something with a more durable lifetime. Enter Mastrant rope sold by DX Engineering (and possibly other places). The specs on this product are impressive to me so I ordered a 100 meter spool of 5 mm (3/16") diameter rope. It has an 1100 lb strength rating which seemed clearly sufficient for my wire antennas. It is offered in several diameters.

After having it in place for a year the rope used on my fan dipole looks just like it was taken off the spool. It shows no sign of degradation from uV rays and the weather hasn't made it hard and brittle and still plays through the pulleys I use for raising and lowering just fine. The stretch is very low to almost non existent so once tensioned it stays that way. When installing my new 80/160m doublet a few weeks ago I used more of this rope and expect it to remain in place for some time. Our club used it for guys for our temporary crank-up tower during the recent Field Day exercise. It could likely be used for longer stints than just a single weekend.

I highly recommend this product. More info at http://www.mastrant.com

 

[RatsoW8]

Funny you brought this up. I bought the same rope a few weeks ago and replaced the 1/8" Dacron I had one of my diploes erected with. It's good stuff.

 

[wavrider]

I have had very good luck with the Dacron type rope, purchased of ebay, still going strong after 8 years in the Florida sun.

 

[Justme]

I;m using their kevlar rope with uv sheatiing to hold up the 77 foot inverted L.
Been up for 3 years now, no degradation in strength and quality.

 

[RatsoW8]

I have had very good luck with the Dacron type rope, purchased of ebay, still going strong after 8 years in the Florida sun.

I've had my highest/longest dipole up with 3/16 Dacron for over a year with no problems and the rope still looks like new. The lower 40/6 meter OCF is about 5 feet below it and I used 1/8 Dacron and it's snapped a few times. So I decided to try the 3/16 Mastrant. It was up when we had a storm blow through a few weeks ago with 60 mph winds and both dipoles stayed up.

It was a night time storm and I turned the back yard spots on and could see the white pvc connection point on the taller dipole which is at the bottom of the 40' vertical run of ladder line 15' off the ground whipping around touching the ground and then disappearing up and out of sight with the trees whipping around. I was amazed that it stayed up.

 

[N0NB]

On June 16 of this year we had a mesocyclone come through and I'm certain the winds were 70+ MPH. Two good sized maple trees in the front yard suffered considerable damage with one having the main mast trunk snapped off about 15 feet up where the trunk was around six inches in diameter and not rotten at all (the tree was between 35 and 40 feet tall before the storm).

my 80/160m doublet ran through this tree and neither the wire or the Mastrant rope failed. Instead a dog bone insulator failed when the wire pulled through the end of it! I replaced it with an egg type electric fence insulator from here on the farm. The wire is the PE coated stranded copper weld from The Wireman.

I'm sold on the durability of this rope.

 

[BenMara]

How resistant is it to abrasion in the trees holding up your antenna?

 

[N0NB]

I've minimized the ability of the rope to abrade against the tree by routing and using a pulley in a key location. It has been close to a year since I inspected the rope closely. What I see from the ground still looks good.