Aluminium tube?

That's a floor mop!

Quite so. We have a long haired tribble, but it's hard to control on the end of a long stick, with your head bent all the way back.

Yes, so? Used and kept dry of course.

We have one (actually two) of these;

Anyhow, I've ordered a 3m length of 40mm waste pipe from Screwfix which I shall probably pop out and collect today. If I've measured correctly, it should fit neatly over the vacuum cleaner nozzle. Hopefully, it'll fit in the car. :o)

And while I was measuring, it reminded me that I finally wore out my trusty Stanley Powerlok tape measure, so I bought a new one of those, too.

Mike

I have been told that using a tribble of synthetic fibers does not work. Using a natural-fibre tribble means that the webs stick to the fibers much better.

The man telling me this was selling horsehair ceiling brushes, among other things, mind you.

Thomas Prufer

Which is precisely what I'm going to do. Already ordered from Screwfix, just needs picking up.

Cheers!

I thought 405 line B&W tv's had gone long ago ? :-)

I've still got one

NT

Spider webs including the hammock webs of daddy long legs Pholcidae spiders are sticky by their very nature. They would trap anything otherwise

Tools and attachments are totally unecessary.

If the tip of a long cane is inserted behind a web, pulled out and rotated this will pick up the first web on the end of the cane. If this is then presented to further webs and the process repeated these will be picked up by the sticky web already on the cane and can be pulled off the ceiling or wall.

The ball of sticky web can be either pulled of the end of the cane at the end of the operation or left for next time.

michael adams

...

For "would" read "wouldn't"

Yes well, commercially-made brackets of that type have a supporting arm. I had my brackets made to my design for many years and after some experimentation found that the supporting arm was unnecessary. It is surprising, but once the brackets have been properly bolted to the wall you can actually stand on them without any problem. The downward force exerted by the weight of the aerials and mast is insignificant.

It seems to work OK cutting slots and then squeezing with a jubilee clip when the mast is thin wall aluminum or steel, but the walls of aluminium scaff tubes tends to fracture.

Yes. Really you should do it in a gale with a lot of glass nearby.

There have been many examples of such failures. Contract ten-element TV aerials with two overlarge holes for the mast clap's U bolt. 8mm holes in 15mm square tube! A hospital I worked for bought a massive 50MHz yagi for their hospital radio link. It was cheap s*it. It fell into two halves due to holes in the boom. The bits landed just outside A & E, but luckily no-one was around.

Bill

OK wise guy! As it happens this guy was a hi-fi fanatic. He bought a tuner and it only had a 300ohm aerial input. This was before 75/300 matcher/baluns were around, so I bought some 300ohm feeder and an American aerial that had 300 ohm terminals. I had to stand the feeder off the mast and wall on little legs. It all worked really well. I put a decent TV aerial at the top of the mast with the VHF FM aerial below it.

This bloke was my favourite teacher when I was at school. My Facebook group for the school has hundreds of tributes to him. He was a teacher who believed in pastoral care; a man who would always be available after school to lend an ear to our teenage angst. Typical comment: "After my dad was killed down the pit Xxxx talked to me and listened to me and it really helped."

Bill

I used to maintain some equipment that was a long way down a subterranean tunnel. When I opened the access door the spiders' webs would form a seemingly sold barrier. The answer was to hold a six foot aerial mast in front and rotate it so the end described as large a circle as possible. This was very effective. By time I reached the equipment I had a large mass of solid web on the mast. It's remarkable stuff.

Bill

Do you not keep a couple of straps and a blanket in the car, so you can lash things to the roof?

I guess the wind loading stresses trump the downforce from aluminium poles every time. It's rather like BSA's choice of roller bearing on the drive side of the Triumph engine's crankshaft over Triumph Motorcycle's tried and tested use of ball races on both sides of the crankshaft where BSA had mistakenly assumed that the side thrust from the primary chain sprocket was of some significance. It wasn't.

Worse still, due to the slight flexing of the crankshaft at high revs, a roller bearing was, in actual fact, the worst possible choice since this over-stressed each end of the rollers which induced rapid wear and a very much shortened bearing life. The ball bearings that Triumph had so wisely chosen could tolerate this slight flexing without undue wear. Compared to the side thrust forces, the forces due to the flywheel balance factor at high revs were, and by quite a wide margin, a far greater problem. This experience of BSA "engineering" was yet another indicator of BSA's ineptitude. They really were "The Cowboys" of British motorcycle manufacturing.

Lucky I wasn't using an alloy scaffolding pole then. :-)

Since my antenna erection activities were of a DIY nature, I had the luxury of being able to avoid working in anything stronger than a gentle breeze.

====snip====

Lucky indeed! That could have caused a fatal head injury that no amount of swift medical care could have remedied. I should hope the Hospital replaced and/or re-sited to a safer location with a more durable and 'failsafe' aerial.

Have you thought of trying something like this:

Not too expensive so might be worth a go if it catches a few.

We got them too. The good news is they eat the black hairy ones

which my wife really doesn't like. So we put up with a few...

Andy

Actually, that's the *bad* news. The black hairy "Borrises" are less of a nuisance since they don't build their webs under kitchen wall cupboards like Pholcidae tend to, preferring more out the way locations less likely to be disturbed.

Also, as far as human perception is concerned, they're a lot less "sneaky" making them a more considerate "House Guest" and they *look* just like a proper spider should! :-)

I'd rather have the Tenegaria. Although the "Bedfordshire Browns" we had in the last house were a bit much;

(Again, arachnophobes should avoid this link.)