Today was a full on construction day. I needed to make the stand off backed to clear the gutter and sort out the mast head fixing.

Luckily I had some square section steel from the roadster build in the shed so that got pressed into action for the framework for mounting the mast plates. I mocked it up and them sat the mast on it before tack welding it.










Then i welded it up and gave it a spray with hammerite.



Whilst that was drying I turned to the top mount. As these masts seem to be used for cameras the heads have an interchangeable spigot arrangement that didn’t look too got for what i want to put on top of it.

So I added some plates onto the stub which goes (with much swearing) into the rotator cage.











I then drilled out some holes so i could bolt it onto the mast head

Here it is mocked up



Then a tricky bit of welding the plates onto the stub and tapping threads for some M8 bolts into the head



Not the neatest welding I know but only birds are going to look at it. Thats the problem with spot welding in an attempt to keep everything flat


Then a call to Mrs LDZ for a helping hand to bolt it all to the shed with ply spreader plates to both sides and the load being taken onto the concrete slab






Thats as far as we got with mounting it as both of us (Mrs LDZ with her titanium back operation) couldn’t lift it into place.


So whilst I pondered on that problem I spent an hour swearing at the stub again as it is not the size of a scaffold pole, which all the rotator cages are made for, it is 50.8mm . As opposed to 48.8.

So a big hammer and a clamp eventually sorted it .






So that’s all for today folks. Hopefully I will come up with a cunning plan for getting the mast on the bracket involving scaffolding in my very odd dreams.

See you at the DX Picknic providing we are not flooded out.

CC