Uh-Oh, My Freedom Spike Broke — So I Redesigned It

When I launched the Freedom Spike, I front-yard tested it and everything seemed good to go. Then I took it on a week-long family camping trip, set up a bunch of masts and antennas for real, and watched a few of them break on me. This video is the honest walkthrough: I show you the actual failure points (they snapped at the choke points of the old dog-bone shape, not the threads), the testing I did to chase it down, and why the fix wasn't what I first thought. I started by assuming it was a print problem — layer orientation, infill. I printed a bunch of versions, went up to 100% infill, tried different orientations, and load-tested them with a force meter. The results were all over the place, but one thing stayed consistent: it kept failing at the same choke points. That's when I knew it was the geometry, not the printing. So I threw out the dog-bone shape and went to a straight shaft that fits snugly inside its mast with very little play. No more choke point, load spreads evenly along the whole length. I'm also printing it at a 45-degree angle now so the layer lines aren't all horizontal, and finishing each one (sanding + acetone vapor smoothing) so it slides into your mast clean. Honest note: this is still the LIGHTWEIGHT option, not a heavy-duty anchor. If you're loading a mast hard in high wind, there are heavier-duty spikes out there and you should bring one. This is built to be light and packable, and it's a bit more delicate by design — but the redesign is significantly stronger than the original. And if you already bought one of the originals: you've already been contacted, and a redesigned replacement is on its way to you free. Making sure these actually work and people are happy is the whole point. Run one hard? Tell me how it holds up, good or bad. That feedback is what makes the next version better. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🛒 GET THE FREEDOM SPIKE https://nomadgearworks.com/products/f... 🏕️ SHOP ALL NOMAD GEARWORKS Radio & Mast Gear: https://nomadgearworks.com/collection... Full store: https://nomadgearworks.com?utm_source... 📄 FREE 3D MODELS (MakerWorld) https://makerworld.com/en/@bblood 📧 JOIN THE MAILING LIST Field notes, new gear, and behind-the-scenes → https://nomadgearworks.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Small-batch made, printed, and field-tested by me at Nomad Gearworks. #hamradio #POTA #portableradio #fieldradio #3dprinting #QRP #makersgonnamake #SOTA