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Here is a photograph of the real ship´s mast. As you can see, it is a substantial structure housing many items including: radars, emergency lights, halogen deck lights, radio antennas, weather equipment, siren, flagpole and even a ladder.
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I originally thought about building the base for the mast out of angled plastic material but decided against it due to its size. Plastruct (see link on my Links page), an excellent vendor for small, plastic material sells angled lengths, but their largest size was too small. Therefore, I cut the base sections from 1.5 mm thick, white styrene sheet.
After cutting the four (4) sections, I glued them together to form the base.
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Everything is just sitting atop of the wheelhouse for the time being.
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The radar units (purchased from Harbor Models) will be operational. Here, you can see I glued the radar bases together and then drilled and inserted a length of 5/32" brass tubing through the radar bases and into the mid-mast deck.
The mid-mast deck will be manufacture from Celtec® material and 1.5 mm thick, white styrene sheet material. The sheet material will be added after the belt and pulley system are added to the radar axles.
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The radar axles (1/8" brass rod) were inserted into the radar arms and then through the mid-mast deck via the 5/32" brass tubing.
The underside of the mid-mast deck is where the belt pulley system for the two (2) radar units will be. They will be controlled by a single motor that will be attached to the underside of the boat deck structure. More to come on that ... later!
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I had to set the radar units atop of the mast base just to see what it was eventually going to look like.
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Here are the three (3) pulleys that will eventually be attached to the radar shafts and the motor drive shaft. A friend of mine gave these to me, and they are perfect for keeping the belt system aligned.
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A closer look at the pulley. The small metal shaft will be removed, and I´ll drill a hole to accept the radar shafts.
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