  The pion form factor is calculated in the framework of the charge-conjugation
invariant Covariant Spectator Theory. This formalism is established in
Minkowski space and the calculation is set up in momentum space. In a previous
calculation we included only the leading pole coming from the spectator quark
(referred to as the relativistic impulse approximation). In this paper we also
include the contributions from the poles of the quark which interacts with the
photon and average over all poles in both the upper and lower half planes in
order to preserve charge conjugation invariance (referred to as the
$C$-symmetric complete impulse approximation). We find that for small pion mass
these contributions are significant at all values of the four-momentum transfer
$Q^2$ but, surprisingly, do not alter the shape obtained from the spectator
poles alone.
