Faith Power Group Portable/Practice Basket

Jimb

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Gold level trusted reviewer
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Oct 2, 2008
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WV near Cumberland, MD
I've been thinking about getting another practice basket, specifically for putting on. I found this basket on Ebay and got one for Christmas. http://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=581&pictureid=33294

The flag says either 1st Disc or Disc 1st on it. I'm not sure how to read the logo properly. The instructions say Faith Power Group on them. Here's their website. http://www.faithpowergroup.com/_d4.htm?c=1006 Unfortunately, I still couldn't determine which name is correct. :confused:

Anyway, it has 12 inner and 12 outer chains. The basket seems to be a little heavier in general than my Insteps. It was very easy to assemble with the base, three pole pieces, a chain support assembly, a cage, and two sets of chains. The pole pieces just screw together.

The only shortcoming of the assembly instructions was that they only mentioned one set of chains, and not two. So I had to figure out how to attach them. Each set of chains is made up of 12 lengths of chain, already attached to a metal ring. The outer set of chains, as shown in the instructions, just gets hung over the hooks around the outer edge of the chain support.

The 2nd set, though, doesn't have any hooks on the support. The end chains actually already have small carabiners on them. They won't fit over the "X" where the metal on the support is welded together. So I just hung them to the outside of the inner bracing. The chains are free to slide out towards the outer edge of the support, but the weight of the chains tends to keep them in place pretty well anyway.

I've only thrown about 25 putts at it so far from around 15' in my parent's living room. I putt RHBH, and didn't putt particularly hard since I was inside. It seems to catch appropriately placed right center and center putts really well. It did seem like it might lose more left center putts than a typical "course" basket. But those aren't good putts anyway.

As I use it more I'll post an update. If you made it this far reading this post, you deserve some pictures. So here you go. :D

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I think they are 117.95 with free S&H.
 
Sorry about that. I posted one of the links incorrectly in my first post. Try this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/301233493703?_trksid=p2060778.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT for the ebay link.

And wow the price went up. It says $157.95 now with free shipping. It was $117.95 when mine was purchased, still with free shipping.

It's not a "bid" item. Maybe the seller would consider selling for less if you go in the the knowledge of the previous price. Or maybe he thinks that the demand will justify the price increase. I don't think that I would buy any more at this price. Although if you got an Instep, and added inner chains, it would probably be almost this much anyway.
 
I have only seen the version with outer chain set, which was crap. Might as well paint a picture of a basket on a sheet and putt at that, since the result is the same: you can see where it hit and make a guesstimation if it would have stuck on a proper basket.

The other problem was weak welding on the screw-in parts. Assemble/disassemble it a few times, bang a few hundred hard putts at the pole and the weld spots are bound to break.

If they fixed both of these qualms, then OK. I probably would still go for the Discmania basket with the horizontal chains if the price is about the same.
 
I only have a few hundred indoor putts on it, all indoors, from 21' max range. I putt RHBH with a little hyzer. I don't putt particularly hard, but have intentionally thrown some hard putts for testing purposes. Here's my initial take on the basket.

It catches center putts pretty well with only a few bounce back misses off of the pole. It catches right side putts very well and really seems to pull in some putts that are well right of target.

It has a fair amount of left side spit outs. But I'd say that this is a problem with my putting, and not the basket.

All in all, for the money, I believe that it's a very worthwhile basket. For my purpose, it's been great.

I haven't measured it, but it seems like the width of the chain assembly is more narrow than on my Instep baskets. So it seems to more accurately simulate "professional" baskets a little better. I would imagine that the 2nd set of chains is critical. So if you find it without the 2nd set, be ready to purchase them yourself, or to deal with a lot more spit outs.
 
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