The Mast
Wednesday, 06 July 2011 13:52 | 
Written by Peter | 
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The main mast is made up of a 6m piece of 50x50x1.6mm RHS stainless steel. It is resting on the pivot bolt and held in between the two base poles by a bracket. One side of the bracket can be removed to allow the mast to be tilted over for maintenance on the ground. My main mast sits very tightly between the poles and needs some force applied to start tilting it. So I don't have to worry that the mast could fall when I remove the lock bracket.
The main mast is extended by a 2m piece of Ø38mm tubular stainless steels jointed to the top of it. I could not obtain stainless steel U-Bolts of the size needed. I had to use galvanised ones which came with very thin and soft brackets. I replaced them with thicker stainless steel brackets. The mast pieces overlap by about 70cm.
On top of it sits the YAESU G-250 antenna rotator. It is the smallest model made by YAESU and just fine for small TV/FM antenna arrangements. Above the G-250 goes another piece of Ø38mm tube to carry the actual antenna and the mast amplifier. 38mm is the maximum tube diameter that can be fixed to the G-250.