Do any of you ever use wire to steady your install poles? Perhaps I'm not too good at getting the pole plum in the first place, but I find it good to use some wire and some turnbuckle connectors for fine tuning when I am just barely off...
Guy Wire for Install?
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Yes I did exactly that with my setup. I am using a NPR on an pitched roof. It helped to reduce the 'flop' as the dish rotated too..
Do any of you ever use wire to steady your install poles? Perhaps I'm not too good at getting the pole plum in the first place, but I find it good to use some wire and some turnbuckle connectors for fine tuning when I am just barely off...
I have a couple of those lying around somewhere at home.
From what I have seen, unless you have something VERY solid to connect the cable to, a guy-wire will just pull right up out of the ground. If your pole is moving at all, unless you can connect to the trunk of a tree or a huge rock, it's not likely to provide enough force to stop the movement. Plus the cables will end up making it difficult to cut grass/weeds around the dish, and/or access the dish with ladders, etc. If your dish moves due to pole flexing, you really need to install a more stable pole, not use a guy wire. I had a friend who tried to anchor his pole to cables anchored to anchors driven quite deep into the ground, and the dish pulled them out.
Now, if the pole is stable, but not plumb, my feeling is that since it really isn't necessary to have a plumb pole, I'd either just go to the extra trouble it takes to align a dish on a non-plumb pole, OR go to the trouble of installing an adjustable top hat on the pole, rather than attempting to install guy wires.
I really think that guy wires may be a temporary fix, but will sooner or later fail, and they really make a mess of the installation. But that's just my opinion.
Now, if the pole is stable, but not plumb, my feeling is that since it really isn't necessary to have a plumb pole, I'd either just go to the extra trouble it takes to align a dish on a non-plumb pole, OR go to the trouble of installing an adjustable top hat on the pole, rather than attempting to install guy wires.
I really think that guy wires may be a temporary fix, but will sooner or later fail, and they really make a mess of the installation. But that's just my opinion.
Previously, I had them on a dish that was attached to the roof of a shed. The dish mount was a little cheap and impossible to get 100% stable. I used 3/8" eye-screws and attached the wires from the pole to the roof. Worked out very well. I also had them attached to an in-ground pole that was on a somewhat wobbly piece of surplus pole from a chain-link fence install. Attached to a 2 ft section of rebar in the ground, it seemed to work well.
But, in the long run, it is better to do a full-on sturdy install in the first place.
But, in the long run, it is better to do a full-on sturdy install in the first place.
Here is a picture of my ground mount 10 foot Orbitron. I didn't have a pole long enough to concrete it into the ground so I improvised. Its been this way for about 5-6 years now without problems. Instead of turnbuckles, I used a doubled-up cable with a rod in the middle to twist the cable to the proper tension. The anchors are some 3-4 foot ground anchors I scrounged up and beat into the ground. I think the key to its solidness is the tight cables in three different directions. They keep the pole steady when I move the dish from one satellite to another, no matter which direction the dish is pointing. Something to consider. Good luck.
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Neat idea re twisting the cable. I tried something like that with regular wire once, and it just snapped, but I guess multi-strand wire rope would work better.
I'm curious how solid your ground is? When my friend tried doing something like that, he just drove pipes down into the ground, which wouldn't be as good as those things you have with the "I" loops to connect to, but his anchors just pulled loose as soon as we tried moving the dish. But I think his ground was not real solid, like a bit on the sandy side, so the condition of the ground is likely pretty important.
The ground is a sand, gravel, rock mix. This area has the glacial deposit from the last ice age push down from Canada. Its not really that hard to dig down through but I think the coarseness of the mixture seems to lock the soil together when put under pressure. Good luck.
Interesting. That sounds similar to what we have here. We have "eskers" on our property that are similar glacial deposits, except that the "rocks" in our mixture are BIG. They widened the road by about 5' for about 150' along my property to form a ditch along the road, and they pulled out about 40 rocks the size of lawn tractors, and some the size of cars. When I put my BUD in, I got the concrete anchored pretty well between some big rocks. But I don't think I could drive a pipe or anchor deep enough to work, because I can't go more than a foot before hitting some fairly big rock. So you must have a pretty good mixture that results in firm earth, without rocks big enough to stop the anchors from going in.
Years ago, I was involved with research once involving filling interstitial sites in crystals with smaller atoms, and later on a project involving making mixtures of pulverized coal that had unique properties due to the specific mixture of partical sizes which allowed packing of more material into the available space. Pretty interesting topic.
Here's a cell phone shot of my use of guy wires. In my case they are used only to the roof mount. So the concerns over the soil do not apply. The leg braces are not in use. The angle brackets are not attached to the NPR so they are not stable.
Please excuse the 'temporary' wiring.
Rick
Please excuse the 'temporary' wiring.
Rick
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rdehaven ..... off topic question... what's the antenna in the background? Looks like a single channel or single band antenna. Thought it might be ham antenna, but the coax looks like RG6 or RG59, so I thought it might be a single channel TV antenna. Just curious.
That's my rig to try and get the Los Angeles OTA stations. The lower antenna is a VHF hi band only antenna. I have a Winegard YA 1713 and a (I beleive) Winegard HD-9032.
The UHF antenna was purchased second hand used locally. The UHF antenna did not have box or documentation. So I'm not 100% certain of that one.
Attached is my TVFool map. From that you can see I need all the help I can get. I'm 118 miles away from the channels I'm trying to get.
The UHF antenna was purchased second hand used locally. The UHF antenna did not have box or documentation. So I'm not 100% certain of that one.
Attached is my TVFool map. From that you can see I need all the help I can get. I'm 118 miles away from the channels I'm trying to get.
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it's amazing what mortar sand and gravel( i.e. concrete)l can do to properly mount and anchor down a pole in the ground. I have done hundreds in the last 12 years .Not one had to be repointed or repaired. But there have been many that customers have tried to install and have completed started over to do it properly. Guy wires ?? We don't need no stinking guy wires
This is why I use a pole that is welded to a triangular plate. The plate has three 3/4-inch holes drilled into it. Then I attach j-bolts (or L-bolts - whatever you want to call them) to the plate and then set the J-bolts 4 to 5 feet in concrete rather than the pole. This way, you can re-level the pole should it get slightly off plumb. I've never had to re-plumb my installations but it's nice to have that ability rather than having to install a new pole. And I've never had a problem with this installation technique even with a 12 foot dish. I don't think guying the pole would be of value but I've never tried it. I would imagine that wind load may negate any advantages to using guys.
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