New Mastamabob

Well,

Following several repairs to my mast, I eventually decided to get something stronger and more suitable to the load I have on the top.

My old mast was somewhat like Triggers Broom from Only Fools and Horses; Trigger claims that he's had his road sweeper's broom for 20 years. But then he adds that the broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles.

So a new mast was ordered from MM0CUG.

This is all galvanised steel box construction and is much sturdier than the previous. Gary (MM0CUG) made something bespoke for my location to cater for the house apex with a higher tilt point and longer wall brackets. He even drove down from Scotland with the mast on his van and fitted it for me.

So here you can see the motorised electric winch that is used for tilting the mast over and lifting it back to the vertical:

The mast has been concreted in at the base, but is also wall mounted with four very substantial anchor points to the bracket:

And yes, it telescopes too!

Local conditions.

It's now Official; I am completely nuts

Well, following a recent street party to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee; a discussion with my neighbours about antennas ensued. The conclusion was that whilst they are somewhat intrigued over what they are for (one neighbour thinks I am a spy), they are not "bothered" by them in the slightest.....

This got me thinking....

The past two days have been spent making some changes here to the antennas; so the first job was to bring down the main HF antenna. If you have been following this blog you may remember the last time this came down, it involved bailing twine and some knots, the details are here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/so-how-can-it-possibly-go-wrong.html

So we tried the same trick again (with the ever patient Vince, G0ORC):

Remove the U-bolts holding the mast to the T and K brackets... then start to tip and let the bailing twine out slowly...

And a bit more....

So here is the antenna on the floor:

So now I needed to remove the pole(s) and the T & K brackets holding it all against the house. Once this was complete I could install the new mast. I got this mast from Gary, MM0CUG he's custom made it for me.

The first job was to unpack the box of bits:

The I had to fit a new top bracket and drop a plumb line:

Then I had to mount the base bracket and line it up with the top bracket and plumb line. I cheated a bit here and actually used the mast itself to line the two parts up:

This is the bottom bracket, not securely fixed yet - just look at the brick dust:

So once the mast was in place OK, I then needed to build the new antenna - it's an MA5B from Cushcraft, here are the elements beginning to be assembled:

And the new rotator and boom on the top of the mast whilst tilted over:

Here is the first element on the boom:

And then the whole thing up in the air:

What do you recon? Insane, hugh?