Anyone using a water filled weight to anchor portable sat tripod

budeneighe · May 29, 2015

Low tech quest:

It seems to me that the easiest solution for anchoring a portable sat dish is some sort of water filled collapsible container(s) system.

Of course, it would also help to have a collapsible mount or tripod with a much wider stance than what one typically can find.

A 5 gallon water bag weights about 40lbs+ and I figure with the right stance 3 of these should keep a tripod upright in some pretty strong gusts. I don't want anything that penetrates the ground or requires a relatively flat horizontal surface for obvious reasons.

Right now, I am using 3 cat litter plastic buckets filled with water but they really look tacky. They really do better than anything else I have tried. I just don't want to lose the space they require when we move.

Is anyone using any kind of water filled bags for ballast? I have seen a few on Amazon and elsewhere, but they are not too friendly as anything but dead weight to lay on top of something else.

Mark and Dale Bruss · May 29, 2015

I used two 5 gallon Lowes/Home Depot buckets filled about half each for the Hughesnet Dish and two filled about a third filled each for the Dish tripod. I used two instead one full bucket for stability.

The handles made for easy connection with bungee cords. The dishes have stood through 60 mph winds.

The buckets stack and I put some sundry loose stuff inside for traveling.

skp51443 · May 29, 2015

I used surveyors tripods for my dish bases with 5 gallon plastic jerry cans for weight. I found that in gusty winds the tripod base would shift and throw the alignment off (Hughes was really picky) and rain would sink the legs. I tried a couple things until a friend came up with a really nice base design made from 1x4 and a hinge with a removable pin. I added some tie-downs so I could lash it to the tripod and some reinforcement around the leg mounting holes to reduce splitting.

Mark and Dale Bruss · May 29, 2015

For the issue of sinking in the ground, I made blocks from PVC with chains to hold them from spreading.

I preferred the water bucket approach becaused it worked on concrete where and stakes would have impossible to use.

Ronbo · May 30, 2015

I use a 2x2 piece of plywood as a base. No wt added. No movement even with 45 mph wind

Mark and Dale Bruss · May 30, 2015

I use a 2x2 piece of plywood as a base. No wt added. No movement even with 45 mph wind

You must always be on level ground

nana25k · May 30, 2015

Guess were missing the fun. Ron uses a metal stack on the feet. Only ever blew over once in 9 years

skp51443 · May 30, 2015

A lot of places we stayed wouldn't allow any stakes in the ground so we had to find something more universal.

Level was often an issue too, with the surveyor tripod it was a simple matter to get the head perfectly level.

We had tried chaining the legs, that did keep them from spreading but if you got a gusty wind into the dish the front leg would walk in and flip the dish over on its back.

This is a not very good photo of our setup.

Dutch_12078 · May 30, 2015

I normally secure our dish tripod with two screw-in anchors, but when that's not practical, I use a 5-gallon bucket filled with water. If the ground is soft, I have 6"x6" wood pads that go under the tripod's adjustable feet.

Ronbo · May 30, 2015

I am not always on level ground. I use rocks or sticks to level wood. I have long spikes to drive through holes in the wood into the ground but have never gotten around to drilling the holes.

Zulu · May 30, 2015

To continue this Bucketology . . .

After a really good wind off the Sierra Nevadas, the handle on my Lowes bucket gave up the ghost and the bucket full of water dropped off the dish. Then, of course, the dish went over:

So a hardware store visit & a few beers later . . .

The hardware alone should now keep the tripod steady.

chirakawa · May 31, 2015

A "few" beers later? I like the way you pace yourself.

BooneDocks · May 31, 2015

I don't have picture, but will try to describe our method. We purchased three punching ballons (sold in party supplies at the dollar stores). They were easy to fill and empty with water and were reasonably durable. We put each balloon into double bagged plastic grocery bags. We had the Winegard type tripod with three horizontal braces from the legs to the center post bracket. We put a heavy duty spring clip on each brace and hung a bagged balloon on each. It was a system that took up virtually no room when stored.

bilmorvn · June 1, 2015

Now have a "carry out", so don't worry about it any more. Finally discovered when we had a surveyor tripod, that you could just lay the legs out flat and it couldn't blow over. Sometimes had to use a couple of blocks to raise a low lying leg to level it out.