Anchor Light

[Rich (P303)]

Installed a new Hella anchor (LED) light Sunday up at the yard. Previous PO had no anchor light. I pulled out a coaxial cable and cell antenna that I would never use and attached my power feed.Should have used the paperclip idea... as the two wires seperated just as they came out the mast base. The gods were with me on this one!I used the existing holes (didn't want to drill any more) to secure the wire (previously used for the cell bracket) and had to drill and tap 3 holes on masthead

 

[Maine Sail]

So where's your??

Rich,Where is your VHF antenna? With VHF the higher the antenna the better the performance. Even if you use only a hand held unit you can buy an adapter for emergencies and utilize the mast head antenna, with a hand held unit, and gain significantly more distance.... One nice trick is to pull an additional string, from top to bottom, so when you need to do mast wiring in the future you just use the "spare" string..

 

[Rich (P303)]

VHF Antenna...

is on the downward side of the mast head, and still there ( Metz antenna not attached). I took off the cell antenna (all the other cr*p was missing down below). That coax was huge... 3/8" minumum. would have been smart to run a spare string just in case... I am not that smart!

 

[Chuck R]

Glad you didn't run into what I did,,,,,,

Rich (P303)As you can see my Dwyer mast has external halyards. Wanted to add a spreader light, fix the steaming light and replace the Anchor light and re place the wiring.. Would have been easy enough except the inside of the mast was stuffed with scrap foam material from an upholstery shop. Spent half a day digging it out and having to take most of the screwed hardware off the mast because the screw ends either blocked the foam or hindered threading the wires.. Can't understand why the foam stuffing. ???

 

[Tim R.]

wire slapping noise

It is very common to find all sorts of things stuffed in a mast to stop wire slapping inside the mast. Consider yourself lucky. I knew a guy who found expanding foam in there. He spent a looong time trying to get that stuff out.