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@mcdanlj@social.makerforums.info
2026-01-13 03:00:34

I bought a pair of 25' Intellitron stainless steel whip antennas from GigaParts while they were on sale ("two is one and one is none" and the second one tipped me me into "free shipping" making its marginal cost pretty low). On removing them from the packages, however, loose roll pins fell out, and the bases fell off the antennas. Both of them.
A roll pin is an inappropriate fastener to use to connect two concentric thin-walled tubes, so this is a design failure. And the roll pins are …

A view into the bottom end of a whip antenna, showing yellow metal tabs for better electrical connections between the concentric sleeves, stops preventing collapsing the antenna too far, and a set of holes. An out-of-focus roll pin is in the background.
close-up view of roll pin. Only one end is tapered, and the pin is not straight.
External view of base sleeve that fell off the whip. It has flat sides where the holes for the roll pin go, and is tapered from the base where a 3/8-24 threaded stud is visible towards the open end at the lower left.