This page describes how I made my big ugly dish (BUG) C-band satellite dish moutning stand with no concrete using some pipe and pressure treated lumber.
Homemade. DIY. Homebrew. Do it yourself. Build yourself.
I bought a 11' satellite dish second hand. It had a long enough pole, but I found that mounting the thing in my yard involved several undesirables:
1. the water table was 6 inches below the ground, so concrete was difficult
2. I was going to move in a few years and wanted to take the dish
3. when I moved, I didn't want to leave a large concrete block in the field
Therefore, I came up with the alternative described here.
Design goals were:
1. mounting should be stable. I didn't want my dish moving with the wind.
2. mounting should last for at least a few years.
3. should be inexpensive; cheap.
Essentially, I made a large X-frame Christmas tree style old-fashioned stand (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Christmas tree style satellite stand.
First, I drilled 3/8" holes in the satellite stand pipe and corresponding holes in the pressure treated lumber.
Then, I prepared the hole for the pipe in my field. Into to this (quickly water filled) hole, I put a largish but flat rock as a foundataion for the pipe.
With a big round boulder, I pounded four five foot sections of 1" steel pipe into the ground for the anchor points.
A friend then helped me lift the pole (with the dish already mounted) into the hole with the rock at the bottom. We rested the pipe on the rock. While he help it still and as plumb as possible, I attached the Christmas tree stand as shown.
Now the sattelite dish would free stand, but it was not plumb nor anchored. To remedy this, I then attached the lumber to the pipes with brackets (see Figure 2) after leveling the ground that the lumber was sitting on as much as possible. After it was firmly attached, a level was used to check plumbness of the pipe. If it was not plumb, adjustments could be made by loosening the appropriate bracket(s) and moving the treated lumber up or down as required.
After the adjustments were finished, we could then align the dish for best reception.
Figure 2. Close up of bracket.
List of materials:
2 - 2"X6"X12' pressure treated lumber
2 - 2"X4"X8' pressure treated lumber
2 - 10' long 1" steel pipe cut in half
4 - brackets as in Fig 2
2 - 3/8", 8" long bolts with washers and nuts
4 - 3/8", 5" long bolts with washers and nuts
Total cost was something like $40.
It took my friend and I about 3 hours to put together the stand itself.
I haven't had any realignment (slipping) issues in the 2 months it has been up even though we have had 60 mph winds in that time.