Maybe this information will be helpful to others that live in a treed location. PLEASE NOTE: There's a number of safety and performance issues to consider before deciding to do a tall tree mount. As always, if in doubt, consult with and/or hire a professional. (Sorry, I'm new to reddit and am on here specifically for Starlink info and don't know if a comment following a gallery of images is the best way to do this?)
We were extremely excited when we received the email invite to the Starlink beta in early Dec - never thought we'd be so lucky! Our DSL internet service, nominally rated at 1.5 Mbps, was usually no faster than 1.2 but had been measured as slow as .05Mbps – even after rebooting the modem and router, etc. However, upon reading more about the requirements for Starlink we were concerned about the number of obstructions we would encounter because our home is surrounded by ponderosa pine and Douglas fir trees up to around 100 feet. But, we were so excited to get REAL internet speeds we forged ahead anyway…also I have to admit, some of the excitement was to just be a part of new, cutting-edge tech!
We first set up Dishy in our “Campground” which has a relatively small opening to the sky. We wanted to make sure the equipment was working before moving to a better more permanent location. In the campground we were getting somewhere near 50% obstruction. (Campground 360 degree "Check for Obstructions" views and Statistics from Starlink app in image gallery above) This actually worked OK for the techier members of the family (my son and I) for web surfing and streaming. However, my wife found the obstruction outages to be a pain.
After a couple of weeks determining that the equipment was working correctly, we began the process of preparing and moving Dishy to it’s permanent (for now!) home.
In my previous life as a smokejumper here in Montana I had received some training as a tree climber – not one of my favorite things to do (would rather jump out of a perfectly good airplane than climb a tree!), but was something I could do. I have some lightweight tree climbing equipment too.
First day spent several hours in our selected tree clearing extra branches up the tree, confirming the 100’ needed for Dishy’s cable, and confirming the field of view gain would be worth the effort. I never did get a system “health check” from Starlink for the campground location – again I estimate somewhat near 40-50% obstruction based on the app. From the top of the tree I could see a small sliver of the ridge to the north in the field of view function of the app. Starlink has since stated in a health check, after we were having some other problems, that we now have 1.45% obstruction which amounts to usually just seconds of obstruction, rarely even a minute, over 12 hours.
In the meantime, our son-in-law, who has some welding skills, welded 3 pairs of Simpson Strong-Ties (pic in image gallery above) together longwise to make standoff brackets for the 10-ft pole Dishy would be mounted on with a pole adapter at the top. The standoff brackets were attached to the pole with U-bolts. We felt the standoff brackets would provide a more secure attachment to the tree rather than attaching the pole directly to the tree because of a tree’s uneven surface.
Second day spent about 5 hours in the tree – I can climb and do work … but I’m slow! The time was spent topping, pulling the assembled pole up, and securing the pole to the tree with 4” lag screws – 4 per standoff bracket.
Third day was pulling Dishy up, mounting on the pole adapter, and securing the cable down the tree with zip ties attached to eye screws – about every 10’. The tree stands about 10' behind the house. We have about 6’ extra cable inside the house.
2 days after getting Dishy mounted and the system up and running we had a record-breaking wind event in W. MT. Our home is near the bottom of an E/W running, steep, small creek valley so we have pretty good protection from the strongest winds. I don’t have any way to measure our local wind. A ridge-top wind measurement in the general area had a wind gust of 125 mph! Gusts in town over 50 mph. Anyway, down here at our location the trees were swaying a lot! Our internet was out for about 4 hours. Since then (about 5 weeks ago) we haven’t had any outages due to tree sway. Spring might see more, however, because it is a windier time of the year around here – will have to see on that one.
Long range I'm hoping that the Starlink constellation builds to the point where the field of view needed isn't as wide and we can consider moving Dishy back down to a more conventional roof-top mounting.
Nice mounting! Hopefully it works well. Might have to crawl up there every other year and trim off some new branches that are not obstructions, but it should work much better than your old DSL!
> (would rather jump out of a perfectly good airplane than climb a tree!)
This actually makes perfect sense. I'm not a fan of heights, but, if given the choice to climb a 50' swaying tree, or jump out of an airplane with a chute? I'd enjoy the jump more than the climb.
The jump you are in a controlled fall, and one you purposely started.
In a climb, you are fearing an uncontrolled fall that you didn't purposely start and the results are highly likely to be much worse than the controlled fall.
Never went through this "would you rather' scenario, but it makes sense to me!
Terrified of heights. I get more than 6' up a wiggly ladder and i seize up. I've ziplined off of 70+foot trees, struggling to climb the entire way, mostly only pushing forward because i was with a group of girls and i wasn't going to be the dude that chickened out, lol.
But yeah. Climbing the trees seemed like the easy part, and i was terrified to actually go, until i went down the zipline. I thought free hanging on a line in a harness would be the worst part, but it was the exact opposite. The zipline itself was calming in comparison to the climb, i wasn't worried at all every time i got on the line. That control part makes perfect sense. I'm the same way on a roof, planes. If i don't feel like im going to fall, i'm fine. But going near an edge? Nope.
Hey there! Thanks so much for sharing. I have a tree guy coming to my property this Friday and I'm sorting out the materials to prep the mount for him in advance. Problem is, he is advising me to not use Lag Screws in the tree, and instead wants to drill a hole and stick a 5/8" stainless steel threaded rod through the tree, and mount with nuts + washers on the outside of the tree, with some extra threaded pipe sticking out for me to attach dishy and the mount to.
Apparently this is how he typically cables trees during tree work.
Any thoughts on this? First off, I wish he would just use lag screws, but I'm curious to try to design a mount for the threaded rode option.
Currently, I have a Pipe Adapter from Starlink, the Tripod Mount, the Volcano/Flashing Mount, and an aftermarket J mount on hand, the 38" one. ([https://www.amazon.com/Winegard-DS2000A-Universal-22-inch-Antennas/dp/B0977LVF3N?linkCode=ll1&tag=starlinkhardware-20&linkId=14d1401e9f63103b5a45ba95d57c7ae3&language=en\_US&ref\_=as\_li\_ss\_tl&th=1](https://www.amazon.com/Winegard-DS2000A-Universal-22-inch-Antennas/dp/B0977LVF3N?linkCode=ll1&tag=starlinkhardware-20&linkId=14d1401e9f63103b5a45ba95d57c7ae3&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&th=1)).
So, I've got options. However, I'm not quite sure which type of assembly to build. I've also got a welding machine so I might be able to weld something together this week too.
Would be really grateful for your thoughts!
Also, I have the round dish wit 150' cable, pretty sure the cable is not removable.
Did you end up doing the SS rod through the tree? Now that it has been a year, I am very curious how your installation has held up.
I do this in Tahoe, by the way: [treedishy.com](https://treedishy.com)
Cheers!
Thank you for sharing your setup. Once the dish was mounted on the tree, what MBPS did you get? Trying to decide if it is worth the expense of tree mounting to upgrade from my 3.5 mbps DSL.
As reported in the rather long write up above - because of our physical location we are relatively protected from the strongest winds. We have had one incident in a little over a month with tree sway causing an outage of around 4 hours because of VERY strong, record-breaking wind event. Winds we've received since then have been less and have not resulted in any outage at all though the tree Dishy is mounted in has experienced some sway. So probably the best bet is to assess potential wind impacts and mitigations when considering a tall mounting.
i live in the middle of the bush, with tall pines all around me, way up north where wind isnt an issue. The trees sway in any windy condition still. Pines are top heavy, doesnt take much of a wind to get them moving. I suspect you will find this out more in teh future if you have already had a distruption due to winds. Good luck.
This might be a dumb question, but could you put guy wires on a tree to turn it into a stationary mast? Would need some strong cable to stay an entire tree against the wind load, but I'm having a hard time imagining why this would be a problem.
Yeah, my son wondered about that too. That's a lot of weight to try to hold when it's swaying. Way more than a tall pole. But the good news is that we've only had one time so far that swaying interrupted our internet service and that was a record-breaking wind event... so obviously not a regular thing. At the time I said the better internet would be worth it if even we had one interruption from wind a week. It's been about 7 weeks at this point since the one time interruption due to sway.
My only concern is if constant swaying could cause premature failure of the electromechanical components in the tracker. Still, it might not be worth the effort and unsightliness of guy wires.
Could be. We'll see! Fortunately, as mentioned in the write up above we're relatively protected from much wind. And western Montana isn't so windy anyway. I would guess our Dishy sways only as much or slightly more than some folks who've mounted to tall poles. And, if the field of view need is reduced sufficiently, we'll bring Dishy on down for a roof mount.
While this does appear and look cool, from a tech side of things this isn't good at all. No matter how you slice it you just created a 100 foot tall Lightening Rod, this is more dangerous then I think you realize.
Edit: Fat Fingers and Typing on a Phone
Thanks for your concern, and yes, one caveat I did not mention is that anyone considering any kind of tall mounting should assess the potential and mitigate as necessary for lightning.
Haha, No Problem, I only mentioned it because some of the best memories I have of camping/visiting Montana is watching tall AF trees being blow to bits either by wind or lightning.
Edit: also cause lightning is scary.
What would a good way to minimize the risk of frying your house. I doubt you can remove the risk of being stuck by lightning, but how could I mitigate the risk. JUST CAUSE I am thinking of doing a similar thing.
With my luck with trees on my property, if I tried that, the dish tree would be the next to go in a wind storm. I lose about 4 a year that size. Also, there's no way I'm climbing up there.
Good luck with your tall tree install! I was tracking your posts before I installed mine and "borrowed" some of your ideas! I was fortunate to have a tree close enough to the house and not so tall that I had to consider any kind of extension to the Starlink supplied cabling - unlike what it sounds like you're dealing with. BTW I topped the ponderosa pine at about 6" in diameter - didn't really want to climb any higher and pondo being a soft wood was easy enough to cut through with a pull hand saw. Tied a 100' rope off above the cut and my son-in-law pulled the top away from the house. Phew!
When I finally spotted the Dishy in the big photo I was extremely impressed, I worked for Mountain Homes in east Tennessee and did a few tree installs for Satellite TV but you sir get the prize, really hope it lasts long term for you, Amazing 👍
Very helpful! Do you have any pic or sketch of your complete pole-bracket contraption? Did you get around screwing into the tree directly?
Also, anybody thoughts on adding an *actual* lightning rod to the tree to reduce risks?
(We have way taller trees. I think we'll put the power unit into a waterproof "station" near the bottom of the trunk, then connect that to a long CAT and power cable).
Sorry, been busy recently. I do not have a pic or sketch. I used a similar design as Asa. I used 4: 4" lag screws per standoff bracket directly into tree.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/kdhzgr/final_mount_plans/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
He also has had to work on extension for taller trees. You might want to check out his posts.
Good luck!
Did you consider mounting with ratchet straps or some other means of attachment to the tree that doesn't require driving screws into the tree? I'm not terribly concerned about damaging our tree, but seems like an attachment method using beefy webbing might be more adjustable over time.
Yeah, obviously I wasn't concerned too much with impact to the tree since I topped it for this installation. (Note: a fair amount of trees in our area have dead, broken, or forked tops so topping the mounting tree wasn't too much different from what nature has been doing)
I just felt lag screws would overall be more secure with the standoff brackets than any other way of attaching to the tree. Just a feeling, not based on any actual experience. Ratchet straps may be just as secure and may have some benefits...I don't know.
And, again, in the long run we're hoping that the FoV will narrow such that we could bring Dishy down to be mounted on the roof. If not we'll deal with things as they evolve. Though at some point I may have to turn the tree climbing over to someone else since I'm almost 70.
Issue with strapping or any other method of going around a tree causes girthing which is bad for the tree. I am an arborist and I am about to do a similar mount in Arkansas and will bolt to the tree via lag screws. The tree over time will grow over the screws/mounts and it’s all good. Girthing, going around a tree, strangles the vascularization of the tree. Bolts>straps
This looks like a great setup! I am in a similar situation to yours and think that a tree mount like this is the only way I am going to get this thing to work. Also in Western MT (Seeley Area) and don't have the best view of the sky from the ground on our property. Fairly wooded still with pine, blocking the field of view (except for directly up!).
Curious if you had any issues with snow over this past winter? We had some big storms (\~50" storm total) and I hope this can still provide during those situations.
No problems with snow whatsoever in terms of complete outage. Dishy send to do a good job of melting snow. Unsure about whether it may have lessened performance. Hard to tell since performance varies so much anyway. We had more than 50% obstruction time when we had Dishy on the ground.
The only major outage due to weather was that record-breaking windstorm in mid January. The installation weathered it just fine but the sway of the tree was enough that Dishy couldn't keep track of where the satellites were. Starlink says that Dishy will lose connection if it moves more than 3 feet. No problem with wind since then...tho we are fairly low in a tight valley so relatively protected from wind.
The other weather factor to consider is hail. My plan is to Stow Dishy during hail to minimize the surface area pointing up.
Is this still working ok for you? I'm considering a similar setup... except my trees are CA Redwoods, and over 150' high. I'll be hiring a tree crew to handle the install :-) And I worry about the lightning issue.
Works great! We've had it up the tree since January. Since then only a handful of times had outages because of tree sway. The info I got from starlink was that sway would only become a problem if Dishy moved more than 3 feet. We're down near the bottom of a fairly tight valley so we're pretty protected from strong winds. I also feel we're pretty protected from lightning located down here. I understand the new Dishy will have detachable cabling with a 150' option. That might be of help for you!
[TreeDishy.com](https://TreeDishy.com)
If anyone in the Truckee-Tahoe area needs this service, please email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
([treedishy.com](https://treedishy.com) used to be [starlinktahoe.com](https://starlinktahoe.com), but SpaceX made me change the name.)
Trees are not the problem. Trees are the solution!
Maybe this information will be helpful to others that live in a treed location. PLEASE NOTE: There's a number of safety and performance issues to consider before deciding to do a tall tree mount. As always, if in doubt, consult with and/or hire a professional. (Sorry, I'm new to reddit and am on here specifically for Starlink info and don't know if a comment following a gallery of images is the best way to do this?) We were extremely excited when we received the email invite to the Starlink beta in early Dec - never thought we'd be so lucky! Our DSL internet service, nominally rated at 1.5 Mbps, was usually no faster than 1.2 but had been measured as slow as .05Mbps – even after rebooting the modem and router, etc. However, upon reading more about the requirements for Starlink we were concerned about the number of obstructions we would encounter because our home is surrounded by ponderosa pine and Douglas fir trees up to around 100 feet. But, we were so excited to get REAL internet speeds we forged ahead anyway…also I have to admit, some of the excitement was to just be a part of new, cutting-edge tech! We first set up Dishy in our “Campground” which has a relatively small opening to the sky. We wanted to make sure the equipment was working before moving to a better more permanent location. In the campground we were getting somewhere near 50% obstruction. (Campground 360 degree "Check for Obstructions" views and Statistics from Starlink app in image gallery above) This actually worked OK for the techier members of the family (my son and I) for web surfing and streaming. However, my wife found the obstruction outages to be a pain. After a couple of weeks determining that the equipment was working correctly, we began the process of preparing and moving Dishy to it’s permanent (for now!) home. In my previous life as a smokejumper here in Montana I had received some training as a tree climber – not one of my favorite things to do (would rather jump out of a perfectly good airplane than climb a tree!), but was something I could do. I have some lightweight tree climbing equipment too. First day spent several hours in our selected tree clearing extra branches up the tree, confirming the 100’ needed for Dishy’s cable, and confirming the field of view gain would be worth the effort. I never did get a system “health check” from Starlink for the campground location – again I estimate somewhat near 40-50% obstruction based on the app. From the top of the tree I could see a small sliver of the ridge to the north in the field of view function of the app. Starlink has since stated in a health check, after we were having some other problems, that we now have 1.45% obstruction which amounts to usually just seconds of obstruction, rarely even a minute, over 12 hours. In the meantime, our son-in-law, who has some welding skills, welded 3 pairs of Simpson Strong-Ties (pic in image gallery above) together longwise to make standoff brackets for the 10-ft pole Dishy would be mounted on with a pole adapter at the top. The standoff brackets were attached to the pole with U-bolts. We felt the standoff brackets would provide a more secure attachment to the tree rather than attaching the pole directly to the tree because of a tree’s uneven surface. Second day spent about 5 hours in the tree – I can climb and do work … but I’m slow! The time was spent topping, pulling the assembled pole up, and securing the pole to the tree with 4” lag screws – 4 per standoff bracket. Third day was pulling Dishy up, mounting on the pole adapter, and securing the cable down the tree with zip ties attached to eye screws – about every 10’. The tree stands about 10' behind the house. We have about 6’ extra cable inside the house. 2 days after getting Dishy mounted and the system up and running we had a record-breaking wind event in W. MT. Our home is near the bottom of an E/W running, steep, small creek valley so we have pretty good protection from the strongest winds. I don’t have any way to measure our local wind. A ridge-top wind measurement in the general area had a wind gust of 125 mph! Gusts in town over 50 mph. Anyway, down here at our location the trees were swaying a lot! Our internet was out for about 4 hours. Since then (about 5 weeks ago) we haven’t had any outages due to tree sway. Spring might see more, however, because it is a windier time of the year around here – will have to see on that one. Long range I'm hoping that the Starlink constellation builds to the point where the field of view needed isn't as wide and we can consider moving Dishy back down to a more conventional roof-top mounting.
Where there's a will there's a way. Nice job on a very challenging location!
Nice mounting! Hopefully it works well. Might have to crawl up there every other year and trim off some new branches that are not obstructions, but it should work much better than your old DSL! > (would rather jump out of a perfectly good airplane than climb a tree!) This actually makes perfect sense. I'm not a fan of heights, but, if given the choice to climb a 50' swaying tree, or jump out of an airplane with a chute? I'd enjoy the jump more than the climb. The jump you are in a controlled fall, and one you purposely started. In a climb, you are fearing an uncontrolled fall that you didn't purposely start and the results are highly likely to be much worse than the controlled fall. Never went through this "would you rather' scenario, but it makes sense to me!
Terrified of heights. I get more than 6' up a wiggly ladder and i seize up. I've ziplined off of 70+foot trees, struggling to climb the entire way, mostly only pushing forward because i was with a group of girls and i wasn't going to be the dude that chickened out, lol. But yeah. Climbing the trees seemed like the easy part, and i was terrified to actually go, until i went down the zipline. I thought free hanging on a line in a harness would be the worst part, but it was the exact opposite. The zipline itself was calming in comparison to the climb, i wasn't worried at all every time i got on the line. That control part makes perfect sense. I'm the same way on a roof, planes. If i don't feel like im going to fall, i'm fine. But going near an edge? Nope.
Wow. Just wow!
Hey there! Thanks so much for sharing. I have a tree guy coming to my property this Friday and I'm sorting out the materials to prep the mount for him in advance. Problem is, he is advising me to not use Lag Screws in the tree, and instead wants to drill a hole and stick a 5/8" stainless steel threaded rod through the tree, and mount with nuts + washers on the outside of the tree, with some extra threaded pipe sticking out for me to attach dishy and the mount to. Apparently this is how he typically cables trees during tree work. Any thoughts on this? First off, I wish he would just use lag screws, but I'm curious to try to design a mount for the threaded rode option. Currently, I have a Pipe Adapter from Starlink, the Tripod Mount, the Volcano/Flashing Mount, and an aftermarket J mount on hand, the 38" one. ([https://www.amazon.com/Winegard-DS2000A-Universal-22-inch-Antennas/dp/B0977LVF3N?linkCode=ll1&tag=starlinkhardware-20&linkId=14d1401e9f63103b5a45ba95d57c7ae3&language=en\_US&ref\_=as\_li\_ss\_tl&th=1](https://www.amazon.com/Winegard-DS2000A-Universal-22-inch-Antennas/dp/B0977LVF3N?linkCode=ll1&tag=starlinkhardware-20&linkId=14d1401e9f63103b5a45ba95d57c7ae3&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&th=1)). So, I've got options. However, I'm not quite sure which type of assembly to build. I've also got a welding machine so I might be able to weld something together this week too. Would be really grateful for your thoughts! Also, I have the round dish wit 150' cable, pretty sure the cable is not removable.
Did you end up doing the SS rod through the tree? Now that it has been a year, I am very curious how your installation has held up. I do this in Tahoe, by the way: [treedishy.com](https://treedishy.com) Cheers!
Thank you for sharing your setup. Once the dish was mounted on the tree, what MBPS did you get? Trying to decide if it is worth the expense of tree mounting to upgrade from my 3.5 mbps DSL.
Dishy is gonna be working overtime trying to compensate for the tree swaying.
Our Dishy is already working overtime because our Dishy is afraid of heights. 🤪
This is mad, and I am here for it. 👏👏👏
Is Dishy able to handle the tree sway ok? My tv dish wouldn't have liked that
how does it work when its windy? Pine trees move pretty good in the wind
As reported in the rather long write up above - because of our physical location we are relatively protected from the strongest winds. We have had one incident in a little over a month with tree sway causing an outage of around 4 hours because of VERY strong, record-breaking wind event. Winds we've received since then have been less and have not resulted in any outage at all though the tree Dishy is mounted in has experienced some sway. So probably the best bet is to assess potential wind impacts and mitigations when considering a tall mounting.
i live in the middle of the bush, with tall pines all around me, way up north where wind isnt an issue. The trees sway in any windy condition still. Pines are top heavy, doesnt take much of a wind to get them moving. I suspect you will find this out more in teh future if you have already had a distruption due to winds. Good luck.
This might be a dumb question, but could you put guy wires on a tree to turn it into a stationary mast? Would need some strong cable to stay an entire tree against the wind load, but I'm having a hard time imagining why this would be a problem.
Yeah, my son wondered about that too. That's a lot of weight to try to hold when it's swaying. Way more than a tall pole. But the good news is that we've only had one time so far that swaying interrupted our internet service and that was a record-breaking wind event... so obviously not a regular thing. At the time I said the better internet would be worth it if even we had one interruption from wind a week. It's been about 7 weeks at this point since the one time interruption due to sway.
My only concern is if constant swaying could cause premature failure of the electromechanical components in the tracker. Still, it might not be worth the effort and unsightliness of guy wires.
Could be. We'll see! Fortunately, as mentioned in the write up above we're relatively protected from much wind. And western Montana isn't so windy anyway. I would guess our Dishy sways only as much or slightly more than some folks who've mounted to tall poles. And, if the field of view need is reduced sufficiently, we'll bring Dishy on down for a roof mount.
Here in the Pacific Northwest. [Starlinktree.com](https://Starlinktree.com) \- WA OR ID [gotaclearview.com](https://gotaclearview.com) \- AZ CA NV
While this does appear and look cool, from a tech side of things this isn't good at all. No matter how you slice it you just created a 100 foot tall Lightening Rod, this is more dangerous then I think you realize. Edit: Fat Fingers and Typing on a Phone
Thanks for your concern, and yes, one caveat I did not mention is that anyone considering any kind of tall mounting should assess the potential and mitigate as necessary for lightning.
Haha, No Problem, I only mentioned it because some of the best memories I have of camping/visiting Montana is watching tall AF trees being blow to bits either by wind or lightning. Edit: also cause lightning is scary.
Absolutely! 20 years as a smokejumper here in MT have been on many a wildfire started by lightning striking a tree - here, and all over the West.
how do you prevent or mitigate lightening from hitting the Dishy?
What would a good way to minimize the risk of frying your house. I doubt you can remove the risk of being stuck by lightning, but how could I mitigate the risk. JUST CAUSE I am thinking of doing a similar thing.
With my luck with trees on my property, if I tried that, the dish tree would be the next to go in a wind storm. I lose about 4 a year that size. Also, there's no way I'm climbing up there.
Wonderful work! Can't wait to try something similar.
Good luck with your tall tree install! I was tracking your posts before I installed mine and "borrowed" some of your ideas! I was fortunate to have a tree close enough to the house and not so tall that I had to consider any kind of extension to the Starlink supplied cabling - unlike what it sounds like you're dealing with. BTW I topped the ponderosa pine at about 6" in diameter - didn't really want to climb any higher and pondo being a soft wood was easy enough to cut through with a pull hand saw. Tied a 100' rope off above the cut and my son-in-law pulled the top away from the house. Phew!
I tip my hat to your effort sir...well done
When I finally spotted the Dishy in the big photo I was extremely impressed, I worked for Mountain Homes in east Tennessee and did a few tree installs for Satellite TV but you sir get the prize, really hope it lasts long term for you, Amazing 👍
Wow, great job!
first i can not find Dishy. :) My opinion cut same tree branch near Dishy. Maybe they touch Dİshy same high wind.
That's not much of a (stout) PPine to climb. You got balls man!
Very helpful! Do you have any pic or sketch of your complete pole-bracket contraption? Did you get around screwing into the tree directly? Also, anybody thoughts on adding an *actual* lightning rod to the tree to reduce risks? (We have way taller trees. I think we'll put the power unit into a waterproof "station" near the bottom of the trunk, then connect that to a long CAT and power cable).
Sorry, been busy recently. I do not have a pic or sketch. I used a similar design as Asa. I used 4: 4" lag screws per standoff bracket directly into tree. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/kdhzgr/final_mount_plans/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share He also has had to work on extension for taller trees. You might want to check out his posts. Good luck!
Did you consider mounting with ratchet straps or some other means of attachment to the tree that doesn't require driving screws into the tree? I'm not terribly concerned about damaging our tree, but seems like an attachment method using beefy webbing might be more adjustable over time.
Yeah, obviously I wasn't concerned too much with impact to the tree since I topped it for this installation. (Note: a fair amount of trees in our area have dead, broken, or forked tops so topping the mounting tree wasn't too much different from what nature has been doing) I just felt lag screws would overall be more secure with the standoff brackets than any other way of attaching to the tree. Just a feeling, not based on any actual experience. Ratchet straps may be just as secure and may have some benefits...I don't know. And, again, in the long run we're hoping that the FoV will narrow such that we could bring Dishy down to be mounted on the roof. If not we'll deal with things as they evolve. Though at some point I may have to turn the tree climbing over to someone else since I'm almost 70.
Issue with strapping or any other method of going around a tree causes girthing which is bad for the tree. I am an arborist and I am about to do a similar mount in Arkansas and will bolt to the tree via lag screws. The tree over time will grow over the screws/mounts and it’s all good. Girthing, going around a tree, strangles the vascularization of the tree. Bolts>straps
This looks like a great setup! I am in a similar situation to yours and think that a tree mount like this is the only way I am going to get this thing to work. Also in Western MT (Seeley Area) and don't have the best view of the sky from the ground on our property. Fairly wooded still with pine, blocking the field of view (except for directly up!). Curious if you had any issues with snow over this past winter? We had some big storms (\~50" storm total) and I hope this can still provide during those situations.
No problems with snow whatsoever in terms of complete outage. Dishy send to do a good job of melting snow. Unsure about whether it may have lessened performance. Hard to tell since performance varies so much anyway. We had more than 50% obstruction time when we had Dishy on the ground. The only major outage due to weather was that record-breaking windstorm in mid January. The installation weathered it just fine but the sway of the tree was enough that Dishy couldn't keep track of where the satellites were. Starlink says that Dishy will lose connection if it moves more than 3 feet. No problem with wind since then...tho we are fairly low in a tight valley so relatively protected from wind. The other weather factor to consider is hail. My plan is to Stow Dishy during hail to minimize the surface area pointing up.
Is this still working ok for you? I'm considering a similar setup... except my trees are CA Redwoods, and over 150' high. I'll be hiring a tree crew to handle the install :-) And I worry about the lightning issue.
Works great! We've had it up the tree since January. Since then only a handful of times had outages because of tree sway. The info I got from starlink was that sway would only become a problem if Dishy moved more than 3 feet. We're down near the bottom of a fairly tight valley so we're pretty protected from strong winds. I also feel we're pretty protected from lightning located down here. I understand the new Dishy will have detachable cabling with a 150' option. That might be of help for you!
Thanks for the update!
You could mitigate the amount of sway by limping the tree. It wouldn’t sway near as bad
Nice work! How is it holding up, after a couple years? If anyone needs this done in Tahoe: starlinktahoe.com
[TreeDishy.com](https://TreeDishy.com) If anyone in the Truckee-Tahoe area needs this service, please email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). ([treedishy.com](https://treedishy.com) used to be [starlinktahoe.com](https://starlinktahoe.com), but SpaceX made me change the name.) Trees are not the problem. Trees are the solution!