Slingshots

I have always liked a slingshot of one kind or another as an aid to getting a wire up in a tree. I still have the Wrist-Rocket that I bought from L. L. Bean back when they were an obscure sporting-goods store in Maine, and it has served me well all of those years, (allowing for changing the gum-rubber tubing every decade or so), it has helped to hang most of my home-shack antennas over the years, but when it comes to lightweight portable radio in the field it is just too big and inconvenient to carry around. It won’t fit inside a pack, it won’t hang off outside without catching on things, it’s kind of a nuisance all around, except for those few minutes when it is needed. I have been looking around for years now for something that satisfies me, and finding nothing.

One day I came across a length of 1/4″ aluminum rod (the size that is commonly used because it fits the appropriate gum tubing) and it came into my head to try to bend up a minimal skeleton of a slingshot. About an hour later, using a corner of a kitchen counter with the help of a few C-clamps and pliers I had something that I could accept as a prototype.

This is Mark 3, made as a test of the bending jig that I fabricated … it came out a little bit irregular, but it will loft a pebble and some mason line right up there! The rubber and pouch is from a rural hardware store but it is identical to this item at Amazon.

As soon as it’s warm enough for operating outdoors I will be going back to wire antennas up in the trees, and I will be testing this thing out asap, so watch for another post! Maybe tomorrow or Monday I will get out there again.

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