Hello Gip,
The antenna was a huge pain in the a.. I first thought of having the main horizontal 'rod' and the 6 large vertical rods in metal to support the weight and be resistant enough for transport. However, my metal work is very basic and welding even worse. Could not find anything to solder copper with copper. Big mess! Next best thing was to superglue copper against copper, which is what I eventually did. So I had the basic frame. I added the 'details next: various cables (thin wire) running from the cental post to each end of each verical rods (eventually to be connected to the top (or bottom) of the 'combs'). The cables seem to be help in place by some sort of 'o' rings which I replicated with thin strips of masking tape held in place with yet more superglue. The 'cables' help giving the structure some strength. The bracing wires were added next with some more strong but thin metal wire. I now needed 12 'comb' structures to get on top of all that. I used Evergreen rods and strips for that. The elongated 'O' at the back of each of those combs is thin metal wire, bent around a home-made jig to get 12 of the same (well, that was the idea anyway!) thing, then superglued on itself (to close the loop) then onto the plastic comb. The hardest part was to drill 12 tiny holes in the middle 'double' part of each of the combs to receive the rods. I had to: glue would not have been strong enough and any accidental manoeuvre would have resulted in broken rods.
Embedded as they are, they bend, but not break... To give you an idea, the squared-section strips into which I had to drill those holes are .30thou x .30thou. The rods coming out of them are of .20thou diameter.
The painting included black primer overal then thin coats of various greens (becoming lighter and lighter) to give a bit of highlight, eliminating the need of washes and , mostly, drybrushing...
All in all, things would have been WAY easier had I been able to weld, I think..! But I'm quite pleased with the results. And there's no way I'm re-doing this in 1/35 scale, Kaleu. NO WAY.