On the issue of cable ties.

Cable ties.  We all use them in quanity on an ongoing basis.  Plastic ties are not very environmentally friendly, though can be recycled.  Over recent years, they have become quite expensive, too - nearly £10 for a pack of ~30cm x 7.5mm ties now!

But, most of all, plastic ties succumb quite quickly to sunlight.  It's unwise not to replace load-critical plastic ties every two years.  Even supposedly UV-resistant ties are affected, and offer little additional usable life.

This year, when maintaining my 2-ele quad, which has lots of ties to keep spreader elements in place, I decided to ditch plastic ties and use stainless steel ones instead.  

I was glad to find out that there is no need for the often-advertised special tool to tighten stainless ties.  It can be done by hand very easily, but a pair of pliers is needed to fold and pull the excess tab where good tightness is required.

Servicing my 12m Yagi last night, I also replaced the ties keeping the coax balun on the boom.  A two year-old replacement had already cracked and was ready to fail completely.  This is a position that gets the highest UV exposure, so it's nice to replace plastic with stainless, such that I never need to replace those ties again or, more importantly, have to somehow deal with snapped ties and a wildly-dangling balun during a strong wind storm.

You can also use stainless for things like vertical pole attachments for stays, although its best to cover them with some rubber padding kept in place with shrink tubing (like the Spiderbeam kit), to avoid damage from scratching.

Best of all, stainless works out a lot cheaper than plastic over the long term, as they don't need replacing!