(a) safe
(b) relatively inexpensive
(c) practical
(d) extremely compact and mobile
(d) professional looking (we admit it, we’re vain)

After lurking around the forums and getting a sense of what others were doing we soon found that our options were pretty limited. We looked into painters poles, wind socks, fiberglass flag poles, telescopic HAM radio towers, modular sign posts – pretty much anything and everything that looked like it might fit the bill. Although some of the other ideas were ingenious, for one reason or another none of them met all of the criteria we were looking for. They were either too heavy to use safely or too flimsy if they weren’t. Too short to be practical or too difficult to transport. Too expensive for now, or (here’s the vanity again) too amateur looking.

We were about to give up searching and splurge on an entry level Clark mast when last week I was strolling through the local Rona (a Canadian Home Depot) and happened upon one of those contractor grade telescopic ladders on sale for $249. Right away I knew I had our temporary solution.

In case you’re not familiar with these ladders, if you look at them the right way they’re not really ladders at all. They’re actually two 22′ telescopic masts with rungs in between them. They’re light, easy to transport, rated for 250 lbs., and best of all they scope down to about 3′-6″. I know some of you already see where I’m going with this, but before I explain what we did you should know that this might not be a project for everyone. You’ll definitely need access to some tools an average handyperson would likely already have in their kit – or at least a friend who does. Also, even though the one we built seems to be working just fine so far, we are definitely not structural engineers. If you do decide to give it a try, like us you also do so at your own peril!

Essentially what we did was took the ladder apart. We removed the rungs and wound up with two masts and a total of 16 rungs. As the rungs also contain the individual spring loaded pin mechanisms which keep the ladder/mast erect, we cut the rungs down to just the section which houses the pin – discarding the rest – leaving us with 32 (one for each side) connections. We than reassembled each mast, overlapped them by six feet, and connected them together schooner style with three heavy duty brackets (for the brackets we used boat trailer rollers [$12 each] which worked perfectly because the concave rubber wheel at one end automatically conformed to the radius of the mast). What we ended up with was a stable, heavy duty, 38′ (44′ less 6′) more or less professional looking telescopic mast.

For a very simple camera connection we found that if we removed the bottom tube from a telescopic monopod, the next section up fit perfectly inside the top section of the mast. A simple drill through and bolt and presto! If you need more height than this (not very often I suspect), then inexpensive curtain rods also fit perfectly extending your maximum workable range to about 48′ or slightly more. With my hefty D200 I definitely wouldn’t go any further though.

For support at the moment the unit is coupled to my Jeep via my wife’s trailer hitch bike rack (she is not pleased), as we are still building a portable base for it with more tubing and outriggers salvaged from a second hand surveyor’s tripod. Total material cost so far is less than $300 for the mast and brackets (not including my monopod). Not too bad for what you get.