G1YBB coax loop free guy rings

UPDATE 12th October 2023
Both sizes of guy ring are available now.

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In the beginning….
I decided that I was tired of having to make a big coax loop around the guy ropes  in my portable setups in order to be able to rotate the mast. It’s never ideal and also on windy days the coax can be waving back and forth continuously, potentially creating fatigue to expensive feeders.

So I decided to design my own guy rings to over come this problem.

These have a slot inside the circle of guy rope attachment points so the coax can be run straight down the pole and not foul on the guy ropes. A small amount of slack in the coax gives enough movement to cover the azimuth degrees with no slot. I always erect the mast so that the no slot portion is to my least pointed direction so the coax rarely even reaches there.

Below you can see how neat it makes the setup with 2 feeders running down the mast.

To protect the pole and the coax from the stainless steel guy rings I sandwich the ring between two plastic bearings which overhang the internal and external diameters of the centre part of the guy rings:
I designed two sizes of ring to suit my requirements, a smaller lightweight version for my backpackers setup and a larger one to suit my car portable setup using bigger poles.

G1YBB guy ring – small
The smaller ring is designed to fit 1.5 inch (38.1mm) max poles and is 4mm thick stainless.
The coax slot is 23mm wide which will pass an N type plug easily.
Weight is approx 350 grams.
There are 4 guy rope holes 12mm in diameter.
I use this myself for backpacking, both on a short single yagi pole and also using two on a 10m high array mast. There are four guy holes, I have used 3 and 4 guy ropes equally well. Whilst 1.5″/38.1mm is the maximum diameter for this lightweight ring I can and have made specials for smaller poles. It is very suited to guying fibreglass push up poles as seen below, and this one is used regularly by M0BUL. The plastic bearing rings ensure metal never touches the fibreglass to cause damage.

G1YBB guy ring – large:
The larger ring will fit both scaffold poles and 50mm/2 inch poles. I cut different bore bearings for each as a 2 inch bearing would be too sloppy for my liking on a scaffold pole.
The ring is 6mm thick stainless and has hole patterns for 4 and 3 guy rope systems, 6 holes at 13mm diameter.
The coax slot is 25mm wide which will pass an N type plug easily.
Weight is 1115 grams.
The image below shows typical 4 rope or 3 rope guying patterns, but for those especially frisky nights you can use all 6!

Below you can see a finished guy ring for scaffold/2 inch poles (this particular one build for scaffold poles). You can see the machined bearing sandwich overhangs the stainless centre inside and outside diameters. This prevents the guy ring from ever damaging steel/aluminium/fibreglass poles and also ensures the coax in the slot never touches the inner slot diameter. Outer coax slot has smoothed edges to protect that valuable feeder!

There are several options for the guy ring to sit on:

You can use the saddle from two exhaust clamps and two bolts:

It can sit on a joiner used to make the mast up:

You can also use a scaffold handrail joiner:

On 1.5 inch, 2 inch and 50mm poles you can use the best option of all in my opinion, a shaft collar. You can see mine in the video lower down:

Lastly (from me, I’m sure other options are there) you can buy aluminium Stauff clamps to fit all poles sizes including scaffold poles, amazingly. Below are my backpackers and UKAC poles used for some years now, the scaffold pole using the Stauff, the 1.5 inch pole using double split shaft collar clamps:

Contact me at my email (see the welcome page) if you are interested in these guys rings, I made them for myself to use but I do have spares.