Thanks to great
advice received here, I now understand that neither my new
WiFi antenna nor my GSM/UMTS
cell phone antenna needs to be at the masthead, 75 feet above the
water with attendent long cable runs, more weight aloft, and other disadvantages.
My first thought was to mount all this
gear (plus
GPS antenna, satphone antenna, and Navtex anntenna which are presently cluttering up the stern rail) on a pole.
I remember seeing an
Oyster which had a pole approximately 2.5 meters high with a ring on the top of it, where all kinds of anntennae were living.
But I can't find any such thing. The Scanstrut poles and all that ilk are made for
radar domes or
satellite TV domes, and antenna mounting is an afterthought. In fact there seems to be provision for at most two other antennae on most of them.
Since my
radar dome is already up on the
mast, and I have no plans ever to have
satellite TV, it seems a bit like the tail wagging to dog to buy a radar pole to mount my
WiFi and GSM antennae.
Yet hours of Googling have failed to uncover any kind of pole like the one I saw on that
Oyster.
Any of you guys faced the same problem, or have any ideas?
I would also mount these antennae on the
mast, but lower down, if there were some way to do this.
Ideas?