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Last changes 3/9/2008 |
There is an array of ways to mount a satellite dish when on the road.
There are those available for purchase and an array of home built versions.
This is a sampling of the available mounts.
Our main criteria for evaluating tripods was; can the mounting
mast be leveled on unlevel ground. That criteria made H&G
tripods our choice.
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Bird-On-a-Wire (BOW) |
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You will sometimes see an older DirecWay satellite Internet
dish that is also receiving satellite TV signals. This
extra hardware is referred to as Bird-On-a-Wire (BOW).
This hardware is not in production anymore but can sometimes be
found for sale. The BOW hardware only worked with the
older DirecWay dishes, the fiberglass ones or the DataStorm
automatic roof units.
BOW doesn't always work. It depends on your TV service,
DishTV (satellites 110, 119, 129) or DirecTV (satellites 99,
101, 103, 110, 119), and which HughesNet (nee DirecWay)
satellite (83, 87, 91, 95, 99, 117, 127) you are assigned
to. There is a limit on how far off the TV satellites can
be from the HughesNet satellite.
BOW does not receive the new DirecTV satellites for HDTV.
If you can live with HDTV limitation, and are on a useable
HughesNet satellite, the BOW has the advantage of a single
tripod solution. |
Winegard TR-2000 Tripod |
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The Winegard
TR-2000 is a small simple tripod. A plastic body receives
the three legs and the shaft for the dish. We haven’t used
this tripod but the fixed length legs indicate that this tripod
would only be good on level ground. |
Winegard TR-3500 Tripod |
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The Winegard
TR-3500 is a simple tripod. A metal body has the three legs
and the shaft for the dish attached. The TR-3500 comes with a
carrying bag.
We had this tripod. We found the fixed length
legs made it near impossible to level this tripod on unlevel ground |
TruPoint Tripod |
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The TruPoint
tripod is a very strong high end tripod. This tripod is the base for the
tripod we use for our satellite internet setup. We choose against this
tripod because of the fixed length legs which make it difficult to get the
mounting shaft vertical on un-level ground. A TV dish needs to start with
a very vertical mounting shaft. The HughesNet satellite internet dish does
not require a vertical mounting shaft. |
Bullseye Mount |
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The Bullseye mount
is an interesting setup. It is based upon an adjustable clamp
that can be attached to a stake, tabletop, RV ladder, and other items.
We were looking for a mount that did not need ground penetration. |
SideKick Multi-purpose Mount |
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The SideKick
is an interesting mount. It can be used as a tripod but also
has several other modes. Check out the website for the other uses. |
Modified roof mount tripods |
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Check eBay you will find several version of tripods that are
basically roof mount tripods. Then are generally lower cost
that “made for RVing” tripods. All of them have fixed length
legs making un-level ground usage difficult if not impossible. |
H&G Enterprises Tripod |
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We found this tripod on eBay. While the price was a little higher than
the Winegard tripods, this turned out to be a very good tripod.
The H&G tripods can be found at
TV4RV.com. |
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The main feature we liked about the H&G tripod was the adjustable length
legs. This made is very easy to get a vertical mounting shaft. |
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In addition to a very useful tripod, H&G also offered some modifications
for the dish that made alignment adjustments a lot easier. |
click on images to enlarge |
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Our original H&G Tripod served us fine as long as we had the Dish 500 dish (dual head).
When we bought a Dish 1000 dish (triple head), the weight of the dish head on the arm was
a little too much for the H&S tripod. We use water bucket biasing to compensate for
the arm load of the dish.
H&G came out with a new Heavy Duty Tripod designed for the Dish 1000 and the five headed DirecTV
dish.
The H&G HD Tripod is a very good package but I made a few modifications to fit how we
will use the tripod.
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This is the H&G Heavy Duty Tripod as it comes in the package. |
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This is the main feature of the H&G HD Tripod, the custom manufactured mast adapter
that can hold the 2" DirecTV five headed dish of the 1-5/8" mast used by Dish
TV dishes. |
click on images to enlarge |
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We felt the anchor attachment point looked a little on the weak side since we will hang
some pretty heavy water filled buckets from it.
The normal adapter for a surveyors tripod (the basis of the H&G Tripod) has a
5/8"-11 tread. We purchased a 5/8"-11 eyebolt, a 3" round heavy
fender 5/8" washer, and a 5/8"-11 self-locking nut.
We had to file a small notch in the edge of the fender washer.
Note the notch in near the nut in the photo.
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The notch was needed to clear the post that is used for the
normal attachment screw (where the smaller washer is). The
3" round washer just fits between the legs.
We had hoped the smaller washer might hold the fender washer in
place but it doesn't always hold. For the time being, that
is okay. The washer is held in place when it is needed,
when the eyebolt is screwed in the mast adapter. The
tripod head is locked between the fender washer and the mast
adapter. |
click on images to enlarge |
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A surveyors tripod doesn't have leg restraints as they normally
use the sharp leg ends to stick into the ground.
Since we often set up on pavement, we needed a restraint system.
We made these chain connected blocks out of PVC building trim. |
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A hole is drilled through a block and a second block was glue to the bottom.
The blocks serve two purposes. One as part of the leg restraints. The
second purpose is to act as ground pads to keep the tripod legs from sinking
into soggy wet ground. |
click on images to enlarge |
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Here is the tripod with the leg restraint system and the eyebolt attachment. |
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Here is the tripod with a Dish 1000 mounted and a ballast bucket hanging from the eyebolt. |
click on images to enlarge |
