I bumped in to a article about some brilliant idea. No idea how old it is and if it is already posted somewhere but I just had to share this.
Just take a “look”
Xan
Holy zipper madness! that was wicked cool!
It did look like magic without reading how they did it.
The article says it is a three piece mast. 
8-Dale
Thanks Xan,
That was great. It said that it was three strips of metal so guessing three. From the video it looks like March 2008.
Kurt
LOL I was in the middle of editing my post after reading the article and then you posted. It says three strips in the article and it shows three rolls in the diagram.
i had the oportinunity to evaluate one of these for a project @work. It is pretty slick how it works. It is best going straight up, not out to the side which is what we were trying to do. It doesn’t need any slip rings as the cable coils up in the base. It is too heavy for a phoenix 
How could I miss this?
Thats awesome, thanks for sharing Xan!
Yeah, I bet it is…
I got curious as to how telecoping mast work. looked at some portable lighting units that had telescoping mast, and the pully and cable setup is interesting.