MIG Welding for Ground Station Mast

At SDSL, we're working on building a second ground station to receive/transmit messages to our Coconut Cube Sat. We wanted this ground station to be a permanent installation on the roof of our building. Our roof was already pre-fitted with screws for securing objects. This meant finding the proper base and mast for the job. At Lab, we've found a 3M base (which is apparently obsolete now) for the job. The mast however, required shopping, we bought a carbon steel 2"x2" inch 10 ft tube for the task.

However, the Yeasu rotator's clamping bracket is a tad smaller and can't be mounted directly on the 2"x2" steel tube, so we've found a 1.75" circular steel tube that we can mount on top of the steel tube for job. Naturally, this seemed like a Welding Job. The nice folks at ASU Chandler Innovation Center are very helpful. They have welding stations and also have welding workshops every Wednesday (per the Calendar, I looked at). Shannon, our Instructor was very generous with her time to teach us MIG welding. I've got to welded 3 times during this processes, first on a flat steel strip, second on a right angle join of two steel strips, the third on a t-shaped join for two steel tubes. We were using C25 (Argon 75%, CO2 25% gas for the job).

Immediately after our workshop, we got to work on our task, and welded, our steel tubes together in about an hour, with welding and grinding to make it as nice as possible.