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If I am going to go hiking I usually take the 8m pole, simply because when packed away it is shorter and more manageable
11metre carbon fibre pole, packs down to 1.62metres - (Ron Thompson - Muscle Zone)
8metre fibreglass pole, packs down to 1.17m - (Grandeslam - Energie 8m Pole)
I went to Decathlon here in Cherbourg, France, and had a look to the long pole Caperlan Geopole classic 11m.
It has 8 sections, is light and wall thickness is thin. It will be possible to use 5 sections and half of the 6th until mid-length where diameter will be only 10 or 9mm.
The sections are some of the longest one I have ever seen: the package is between 1,9 and 2m.
I have a pole which has same thin wall thickness and I found it very fragile and flexible. You feel you could crashed it just pressing it in your hand. With the Ricoh GX100 plus the wide angle additional lens, the total weigth with the cradle is 620g and it is its limit. The top section of the pole is Ø9 mm.
I have another pole which is heavier 1,4kg instead of 1,1kg with increased wall thickness and is stiffer.
Let me recommend another one , Sensas X40, 11m. See here:
The lower section is 152cm but can be shortened a bit because it is 10cm longer than any other section. So it can be less than 150cm for shipping at low cost
It can be found for about 125Euros. I got it at Mondial Peche shop. :
Be aware that nothing is definite. At most I'd carry 7 poles (as was done a few years ago). The cost of a pole in the UK is between £80-£100 ($130-$165) + whatever it costs for delivery to my home plus I might also have to pay an excess baggage charge (given the length of the package) and you'll have to pay Broox transport costs within the US. Even so, I guess we're looking at less that $200 per pole in total.
that's a fantastic deal! I used UPS to ship the same pole to the USA for David Zinniker (Tgran) - it cost
That is a great deal. Maybe Broox could help out as he's relatively local.
The initial courier Marcus (at tackle2U) found was
Sounds like a great deal though!
Folks, thefishingguys dot com have poles here in the US. I know Hahnz has a 12.5 meter, 10 sections, 890 grams pole ready to ship.
Contact info:
Hahnz Teope
The Fishing Guys
1441 Spruce Ave.
Hanover Park, IL 60133
224-489-7786
630-736-0776 FAX
They have some interesting carp pole fittings that could be adapted for PAP: pole pots and flexible connectors. They might eliminate the need for special PAP engineering--or not.
It's a nice development for carp poles to be more readily available in the U.S. Price is a major issue for me, though.
I wonder how well a 42-foot carp pole would work for fly fishing. It might get some stares when seen on a wilderness lake in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. Watch that backcast!
9.5m http://thefishingguys.com/product_info.php?products_id=124
12m http://thefishingguys.com/product_info.php?products_id=123
I also included Hahnz' contact info in my earlier post. I just want folks here in the US an opportunity to buy a pole for PAP. PokyTom, what pole pots and flexible connectors are you thinking will work for PAP? I connect my camera via an ultrapod strapped to the top tip of my pole.
The pole pots look like a nice way to terminate the pole at various thicknesses. Other than that, I have no specific ideas. I just see parts and think that I might use them some day for whatever. I've been doing a lot of that this week. I come up with a solution and then I try to see ways to simplify it. If I can buy a simple part that keeps me from making one, that's fantastic.
I bought 2 nibblers today at Harbor Freight for $7 each. The one that can start inside a 3/8" hole is really fun on 1/16" aluminum. The other one starts on the edge of the material. I'm not sure that I will use it much but for $7, what the heck.
http://www.allfishingbuy.com/Fishing-Pole-12-16.htm
Most of us use 'put-over' rather than telescoping poles. For PAP, a 'put-over' pole can't collapse when held vertically (since the bottom end of each section fits OVER the top end of the next larger one). A telescopic one can unless it locks pretty tightly. This is not a problem for fishing (since the pole is rarely vertical) but is with PAP (often vertical with a heavy camera at the top).
The other point is that for PAP it's necessary to discard the top segments - while fine for fishing they are too narrow and bendy to support a camera. Typically it needs to be about 1cm in diameter at the top to support a point-and-shoot camera. It's not clear from the pictures at that website how many segments you'd need to discard, but I'd say at least 6 of the 16 (maybe more), which means that a 40' pole would have a usable length of 40*10/16 = 25'.
It's worth explaining to the guys at allfishingbuy.com how you intend to use the pole and asking (a) how easy it is for the poles to collapse and (b) which section has a diameter of less than 1cm.
I agree with Dave that the telescoping pole sound a little scary and I think the taper on these poles is pretty gentle -- so you would lose quite a few sections for PAP.
Before that I taped the sections with the tape overlapping both sections. Now there is one turn of the tape on the smaller section just over the lower one and another turn overlapping both.
Even This is safe I have only put over poles for overhanging photography.
Details on my processings on becot.info pole pages.
http://ostro.ced.berkeley.edu/~crisr/discuss/comments.php?DiscussionID=2867&page=1#Item_1
In Europe most houses are built with stones and concrete. There is no need to paint the outside walls often. So the painter pole is not a common tool and it's hard to find.
On poles usually 1.5 m are discarded to get a
http://www.tackle2u.com/prods/grandeslam-carbo-competition-11m-pole-only-5999-half-price-bargain.html
Anyway telescopic poles are not recommended for elevation photography.
There are other features that I should have mentionned earlier for choosing a pole. These are the base section diameter, the wall thickness and the fiber strength/elongation modulus.
These give the pole more stiffness or more flexibility. The larger the diameter, the thicker, the higher the modulus and the stiffer the pole will be. Usually higher modulus are used to make lighter poles with lesser wall thickness, so the stiffness is not really changed.
If looking at the diameters of the base of the nine 12m poles shown on the allfishing.com page they range from 33 to 37.5 mm. If compared to my poles
Thank you very much to everyone for all of the excellent advice - I have just purchased the Ron Thompson Gangster from tackle2u, which they will ship to North America (Canada, in my case) for
Unfortunately, tackle2u has just informed me that they are no longer shipping large items (including carp poles) to North America.
They might learn something from Dave Mitchell. I think they are afraid to branch out to different shipping companies or afraid of insuring safe delivery or it's just too much work for them.