You have made a nice looking job of this Stephen. My preference is for removable masts to minimise the chance of breakages when ashore. With careful design metal mast legs can be used for the negative lead, and a positive lead fed inside. Flush or surface mounted sockets can receive the feet of the mast legs with the addition of a separate contact for the positive lead. All quite achievable with a bit of careful planning.
Good luck ! 😉

Very Nice mast, well Made
Congratulations

This is very much a work in progress, I’ll update my RTTL blog when it is finished, this is the Pylon mast for the 1:30 Kitshack model.

The main structure is 3mm carbon rod with 1mm and 0.8mm carbon for the yogi aerial. I’m using a slightly different RADAR as I want it to rotate so the RADAR shaft will replace the loud hailer shaft. It looks a bit rough at the moment as needs cleaning up and painting.

The di-pole ‘birdcage’ has taken me six attempts, have tried carbon and brass, couldn’t get it right as is 50mm long, 9mm diameter. Finally found some 1mm plastic with a metal core that bends easily and glues together. Only have the final two sections to glue in place now.

Hi Steven,

I have tried all the methods now listed on this thread with varying results.

However on my last two launches I built a fold-down and then a totally removable mast - both in wood and styrene. This saves a lot of fiddly work with a soldering iron but I have to make do without mast lights.

It seems you can have it both ways! I'm either case, I think we all agree that a fixed mast of any kind is extremely vulnerable and is bound to be knocked off - or even lost - at the pondside.

Dr John F. Leeds and Bradford. MBC🤔 🤔

I would use several sizes of telescoping brass tube rod and wire, soldered together and etch primed. If you are not too hot (pardon the pun) on soldering, you can use Evergreen plastic tube and rod. Platforms for lights, radars etc can be made from brass or plastic strip or even 1mm ply...

What about using différent copper pipes then you could us the pipes as the +or - for your Lightning in the mast. The other possibility is using plastic pipes in different diameters

My preference is to use brass flat, tube and rod, with soldered joints, then painting to correct colours .
Cheers Colin.