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as it is, the antenna couls be used on 4,7, 10,12 meters and possibly on 15 and 20 meters too; willing to get down in frequency (say to the 40m band) we may use an alligator clip to connect a piece of wire to the top of
the (fully extended) antenna to obtain an " inverted L" antenna which we may the feed using a 9:1 to achieve an easy to deploy "random" antenna allowing us to get on the air on HF (10 to 40 meters) and above; not bad for about $25 ... and it may fit SOTA pretty well
Have you seen the $20 telescopic vertical antenna thread on QRZ? It's based on using a 17 - 18-foot frisbee retriever that costs about the same amount. I think the frisbee retriever may be a little more robust than a lot of the antennas on Amazon.
I made my version with a 15" diameter cap hat using two 15" sections of measuring tape. It has fallen over a couple of times when I didn't have it secured properly to a picnic table.
A couple years ago I bought an inexpensive, generic 17' / 5.6m telescoping antenna from an online auction site. It looked like exactly what those guys are talking about, but without the threaded top section and with a nice connector on the bottom. I spent quite a while winding a coil on a PVC base with taps I could use via alligator clips. I got it all tuned up in the garden at home, took it to the field and.... nada. It wouldn't tune. It took some more playing and experimentation with adjusting the whip height and trying out different combinations of counterpoise wires to learn to use it.
Later I saw references to the KJ6ER "Pota Performer." The main thing I picked up from that design was the use of raised verticals: they seemed to make a significant difference. I used fiberglass driveway markers as end-supports and alligator clips ("Muller" clips?) to attach the end points of the radials.
In the end, several sections broke off the whip after falling over one too many times. But I found it a design with significant potential. I had made a bunch of QSO's -- several POTA activations -- with it. I especially appreciated having it for places where using trees was not possible or appropriate (e.g., an urban park or on the beach).
I do plan to build another, and this time use the KJ6ER design as my starting point. (If I wasn't so cheap, I would just get a "Silver Bullet" from Wolf River Coils: they look like just the thing! But building cheap is half the fun.)
Todd, mine was meant to be just a coarse idea, by the way other similar solutions may (will) exist, also, the telescopic stick or, better said, two sticks, may be used to build a 10...12 meters band rotary dipole (if such bands are of interest), again, just some food for thought, nothing more/else
... and it may fit SOTA pretty well