[Moon] Amount of concrete ballast needed for a 5m dish

Tommy Henderson wd5ago at hotmail.com
Sun Dec 30 13:28:44 CET 2018


Conrad,

1st hope you had a  Merry Christmas and will have a prosperous and healthy New Year

I did something similar 35 years ago with a 4m solid dish on a rent property.  My pads were not as large, however, I also used screw anchors for trailer houses to screw into the ground and bolted to the pads.  All was picked up quickly when we purchased our first home.


Tommy - WD5AGO
LNA's from 50 to 6000 MHz
Cavity LNA's and Filters
CP Feed horns 2 to 10 GHz

________________________________
From: Moon <moon-bounces at moonbounce.info> on behalf of Conrad PA5Y via Moon <moon at moonbounce.info>
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2018 5:42 AM
To: 'moon-net at mailman.pe1itr.com'
Cc: 'moonbounce_info'
Subject: [Moon] Amount of concrete ballast needed for a 5m dish

Hello 2019 will be soon upon us and I will start with my 5m dish project.

I was considering my options for a base and I would rather not dig a big hole and fill it with concrete. I live in rented accommodation and if I ever have to leave the Netherlands I don't want the headache and cost of getting a big lump of concrete out of the ground. My idea is to make a new mount with a 80 x 80 cm base plate which will be placed on a stelconplate. These are 200 x 200 x 14 cm concrete plates that weigh 1325kg. I will fasten to the stelconplate with 6 x 24mm chemical anchor bolts.  I will also add 2 concrete lego bricks which weigh 1200 kg each so the total weight of the 'ballast' will be 3725kg. I could easily add 2 more smaller lego bricks which will add another 1200kg. The dish is mesh (diamond shaped mesh 5mm x 3mm with 1.6mm wire) will be stored bird bath style and I will make provision for tying it down. There will also be some struts to the top of the 4m high mounting pole. I will probably make something similar to what ON7UN uses so I can tilt the dish over for assembly.

Does this sound like enough weight?

To summarise there are 2 possibilities

Option 1: 200cm x 200cm x 14cm concrete plate with 2 lego bricks total ballast =  3725kg
Option 2: 200cm x 200cm x 14cm concrete plate with 2 large and 2 smaller lego bricks total ballast = 4925kg

The plates are very strong and designed for 20 tonne trucks to run over, I am also not worried about the 6 x 24mm chemical anchors pulling out, especially with the struts in place.

73

Conrad PA5Y

PS the new 2m array will be ready in February.


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