This is the view before the mast was erected, apart from VHF antennas on the roof there is a G5RV attached to a 25ft pole behind the shed and hidden by the trees in the photo.

Also just to the right the

Cushcraft AP8  vertical can be seen. The garden is only 100ft long so a few feet of the ends of the wire antenna's have to drop down at an angle back into the garden.

I kept putting off the planning application as I was worried the neighbours might complain.

I had got to this stage digging the hole for the mast base when I managed to damage my foot in an argument with a forklift truck, so the last few chunks of mud had to wait a few weeks.

I managed to get a piece of 5inch square x 1/2 inch thick steel very cheap that was lying in the yard of a local engineering shop.

It was longer than I wanted and I decided not to cut it so I have 7 feet above ground and had to dig deeper to bury the other 6 feet.

Work in progress gives an idea how long the base is.
 

On the right to make sure I got the base vertical

I clamped a spare piece of steel to it.

Picked this Heavy duty winch up from a car boot sale for £8.

Think it was from a ship and it has full auto braking in both directions.

Here's the base after several coats of green paint.

Maybe I was thinking it would blend in and the neighbours

wouldn't notice it.

 

The wife had to be in there with the flower pots,

maybe she thought she could disguise it as a bean stalk !.

 

Luckily my neighbour saw the mast at full height and said was I going to put guys on it and maybe I should think about it.

 

 Brilliant just what I wanted to do but hadn't, because of how it might look,

so now I can keep it at full height when it's very windy.

 

The extra height of the base and the larger winch together with the cable pulley design makes raising the mast very easy. the only hard part is watching the guy wires and dipoles as it goes up.

 

In the past I have managed to take the steps and part of the greenhouse

up with it, oh yes! and my leg.

 

No its not my idea of camouflage

I just ran out of light green paint and had to use dark green for the cage.

 

Do you know how many times I

walked into that alloy horizontal jib,

hence the old t-shirt, still didn't see it though, but it stopped it hurting

so much.

Three Element Jaybeam for 10/15/20

 

The Beam had been hardly used by the previous owner and was in excellent

condition, just needed a clean at the

joints.

I had to add

a boom to

hold the

40 & 80

metre dipoles

and to keep

them away from the guy wires.

 

It's not exactly a big mast so

I was quite surprised when a friend said that he had noticed it while going over a local bridge about a quarter mile away.

So I nipped out and took this photo from the car park next to the bridge,

Not a very good picture then again it's not a very good camera!.

 

Using the ten times zoom,

Didn't help much did it.

I suppose I have created a landmark,

or maybe just an eyesore ?.