TV Antenna Coax Installation in Mast

[HappyDivers]

I want to install a TV antenna on the mast of my Jeanneau 44DS, just above the deck light and radar dome. The mechanics are easy enough, but I started pulling ceiling panels and access plates to scope out the cable routing, and I got a bit discouraged.

It's a deck-stepped mast. I pulled the ceiling panels and jack post cover from inside, and I can see the cables exiting upward and into a little flexible conduit. I went topsides, pulled the access plate at the base of the mast, and I saw the same flexible conduit penetrating through the deck. The flexible conduit makes an inverted U-shaped loop (approximately 18" total length) inside the mast - presumably for water ingress protection in case some water gets inside the mast. The cables then exit the flexible conduit and go into their respective fixed conduits in the mast - presumably one to the radar / deck light area and one to the masthead.

I had intended to use a fiberglass wire rodder or fish tape, but there's just no access. The access panel on the base of the mast is approximately 2"x4", and the mid-mast fixed conduit is opposite the panel, behind the jumble of flexible conduit. I was only able to see all this using a borescope. I reckon it all worked well when the mast was sitting on the ground, but I'm not seeing a way to get RG6 from point A to point B.

I considered trying to use a small chain or weighted string from the top, but I don't think I can get inside the fixed conduit from a small hole drilled into the mast for the cable, nor do I think the force exerted by the weight of the cable will be enough to get all the way down the fixed conduit.

Anyone run across this or have some advice?

Jeff

[KeelMe]

Hire a professional.

In my younger years there wasn't a conduit I couldn't get a cable in. I let my more youthful coworkers handle that now.

It is substantially easier to do it on the hard but it can be done with the stick up. Being a newer boat it's not likely but most pros leave at least one pull string in the mast for occasions like this.

The last thing you want to do is leave it out of the conduit. I sailed a boat across the GOM a few months ago with no conduit and the banging just about drove me crazy.

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by KeelMe

The last thing you want to do is leave it out of the conduit. I sailed a boat across the GOM a few months ago with no conduit and the banging just about drove me crazy.

I needed a TV antenna cable from the masthead and found all the existing conduits full so I installed cable ties in an X pattern about every six feet to hold the cable in the centre of the mast and stop it rattling. Interesting thing is that it not only worked well but also stopped another previously installed radar cable which had previously been rattling from doing so.