DIY Hand crank camera mast

[allisonr1495 0]

Hello All, I volunteer with an Emergency Management Agency for a small town In Illinois. We are putting a surveillance system on our command trailer and have positions for 3 bullet cams but we are thinking we would like a mast of some sort for the PTZ. We looked at prefab and they are too far out of the budget so now we are looking for a DIY solution. Something between 20-30' preferably hand crank and telescoping. Any Ideas? Thank you!

[jeromephone 6]

Maybe something from the ham radio group there used to be some crank up antenna masts on the market. I looked into this a while back and found that the commerical stuff is expensive, but I am sure insurance costs enter into the price.

[twice_shy 0]

I was going to post what jeromephone already did, but another idea might be to try and find DIY budget filmmakers or a forum/discussion group where they congregate (I don't know where that is offhand and FAQ implies I can't mention other boards anyways for any reason) to see what ideas come up. They're always figuring out how to make camera rigs on a budget and i'd think someone could figure out the problem on the cheap because they might have a reason to use it themself. The main difference being that an emergency might involve high winds and you'd have to have a more resilent system than something only designed for good shooting conditions.