I can see what your talking about... but that shape was driven by a constraint in the geometry of the hood - In order to use completely straight poles the front end needed to first "lift" the poles up about 1.5" so they could then travel as straight back as possible (we really wanted to avoid bending the tubing or notching it to kink-bend it). This allowed us to use more of the pole material - which is the lightest and most rigid material on there, and also use less sheet metal - which is considerably heavier per unit length and is much more likely to bend if just used as a single flat plate.
Total weight of the finished pole sits right under 6lbs - 5lbs 15ounces. This was actually better than our CAD model estimate of 6.5lbs, and if I'm not mistaken - one of the lightest poles out there.
The torsion strength of this pole is also very good considering it's weight, which was a value (the torsion) I could not accurately measure on my CAD program. Having it fabricated and being able to crank on the handle bars now - it is very very stiff and the ends of the handle bars do not move considerably (around .75" or less) when twisting the pole as hard as normally possible...
The size of the block on our pole may seem somewhat big - (in reality it is only about 5.5" long) but when this is compared to the RRP pole, it is around half the length. Just to make it easier to see that - here is a crude side-by-side comparison to prove the point...
When you throw in the fact that the RRP pole weighs 12 lbs and costs $800, while ours weighs under 6 lbs and will cost around $400... well...
