posted
OK, I'm back at the well, asking for a little help.
When I'm at home, my Hughes dish is mounted on a home-built "tower" I built out of 4x4 landscape timbers. On this I have mounted the standard "house side" angle tubes with everything just far enough off the ground so my view to the SW shoots over the trees and etc. and is relatively easy to take down for travel, which I hardly EVER do!
Anyway, the timbers are so green that they are twisting, almost daily! I have to climb the ladder to re-aim every three days or so to keep the service going! It's getting tiresome. In a perfect world I would hit the lottery and just buy a second complete system and keep it in the coach, but the world ain't perfect.
So my question is, what are others using to keep the dish while staying at home? Steel pipe? Standard tower sections? Heavy wall electrical conduit? I would like to keep in the same general location because I can take it down quickly, you know?
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, I'm open to suggestion.
Thanks all,
Jay
-------------------- Growing old is mandatory, Growing up is optional.
posted
Jay, Originally I had my dish & alignment bracket mounted to the side of the house using the Direcway-provided mounting kit. It consisted of a curved piece of pipe and a stabilizer arm. For travel, I would slide the dish & alignment bracket off of the pipe & take it and the modem with me in the RV. My RV setup was an 18" piece of chain link fence post terminal pipe ( 2 3/8")? mounted to a 24" x 48" piece of plywood. Drop the plywood on the ground, slide the dish with mounting bracket onto the pipe and align! When I got home, I would put the dish back on the house-mount. Eventually, this got to be old so I bought a used Direcway system, complete, on Ebay for $100. I've been using this crude setup for 10 years! Now, this is also getting old so this fall I will(hopefully) be installing a used Motosat F1 system on my RV (found on the Datastorm classifieds). Best of luck with your setup! Felix
Posts: 34 | From: Pacific Northwest | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Jay, My home setup is a SCH 40 4in dia steel pipe set 3 ft deep in 6 90 lb bags of SACRETE and a cross bar as Bill indicated. I welded a flat plate to the upper end of the exposed 4ft pipe with four holes to match the standard house bracket. Plastic 1 inch condut down the middle and out the bottom to the house for the cables. Have never hadd to adjust this in 7 years.
posted
Thanks, all. I've considered the SCH 40 pipe but was thinking along the lines of 2-1/2 OD electrical conduit but wasn't sure it would stand up to any wind loading. 4 inch most certainly could, I would think. If it hasn't moved in seven years that is pretty convincing. I'd already figured that the top would have a plate on it because I have the Maxwell style whatchamacallit that fits on my DeWalt tripod for travel. That much steel I've got on hand. I'll peruse my local steel distributor for the other. And 6 90 pound bags of Sacrete! Gonna have to get the utility trailer out of storage! Thanks again to all who responded. Jay
-------------------- Growing old is mandatory, Growing up is optional.
posted
Ours is on the roof with the usual three-legged stand. We don't use Hughesnet at the house any longer since we bit the bullet and bought service from a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider.)
-------------------- Cheers,
John F1/D3-3.9.6V/HN7000S/ 91W/1070/33 /66.82.10.62 gateway 2005 Itasca Horizon 40AD, 2006 Jeep Rubicon Unlimited Posts: 531 | From: On the road for a while | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
I doubt that anything larger than the 2 3/8" OD pipe should be necessary. Something like a 9' pipe buried 3' into the ground should provide enough strength to keep your antenna rock solid and you can use the included mounting bracket without modification.
-------------------- Bill Adams Winegard Company Posts: 15778 | From: Traveling the Western US | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Given you are in Michigan, I strongly recommend the pipe in the ground method, or a 4x4 pressure treated post with a roof/wall mount on the post.
Don't put it on your roof if you can possibly avoid it. There is no technical advantage to a roof, and the first time you need to clear snow or ice from the dish you'll be a whole lot happier with the mount being somewhere you can reach.
-------------------- Terrestrial Wireless (finally found an alternative!) Posts: 233 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
My brother has to use Hughes Net at the ranch, as there is no other choice, including an aircard. He in on the down slope of the Sierras and has winds of over 60 mph almost weekly, with occasional gust of 125. He used just a normal 2 3/8" steel pipe set in concrete and has never had to reposition the dish in over 3 years. He did drill a hole in the bottom of the pipe and put a bolt in so that it could not twist, unless it twisted the entire setting, concrete and all.
-------------------- Bob & Betsy '05 HR Endeavor With an F1/D2/HN7000S on SATMEX 5/1070MHz; Cradle Point MBR-900 Router Where the Wheels are stopped today Posts: 159 | From: Meridian, Idaho.....sometimes | Registered: Jul 2006
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