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Hi all

we have just returned from a weekend away with friends and due to the amount of us decided to put up our full awning incase the weather was not kind to us! We have only put this awning up twice once with some experiened caravaners and this weekend. this awning which is a fantastic awning in great condition came with steel poles which are a pig to put up . The first time O/H put it up he dented the van 2/3 times with poles that dropped out. this time we have a lovely dent in the door ( not his fault the bl**dy poles just drop) Does any one know if the easy alloy poles are any better to use and where can we get just the poles from. doesn't seem to be anything on ebay and really dont want to pay £300+ for new ones from bradcot!!

Hi, we've got a Bradcott Active aswell, but dont have much of a problem putting it up.  We did however get the alloy system with it, so could be different.

With our pole system you have white plastic rubber backed pole holders which you attach to the inner awning material, on the run of material.  These plastic clips have a hook hole, and there are hooks on the end of each pole to attacth the pole to.  Is this what you also have?

If so, at what point of erecting the awning is the pole falling and hitting the van, is it when you are putting the roof struts in, then they are falling back to the van whilst stll attached to the clips via their hooks Becky?

Tony B 

Another vote for the easy alloy system here.

The only thing I can think of other than Bradcot would be a dealer who sells Bradcots - ours takes awnings in part-ex for new ones so they may have taken something with alloy poles you could buy cheap if the fabric isn't too great.  Or buy a used awning on ebay just for the poles - could well be cheaper than buying new poles.

Hi all

at Sdrew56, I do help hubby put the awning up with him but as the poles are in 3 parts and not spring loaded , they have a screw thing to tighten, whilst holding the one pole whilst he tensions it, the other pole falls out and went into the van!

at TonyB52, our poles are the steel ones and do have the hooks on  which attach to a pad thing which runs on the rail of the van  the poles are in 3 parts and go into each other and tighten with a screw thing we tighten, they fall out of each other before we can get to tighten the screw!!   

at vanessa Thanks for that info think that will be the cheaper option for us!

Becky