Tripod on shallow pitch roof

[bgeastman]

Hi from a newbie. I've been an engineer and a builder for a while, but totally new to satellite dishes.

From the pictures of the EZ485A tripod mount, there do not appear to be any adjustments to achieve a plumb mast. My problem is that the (dormer) roof is a 3-1/2" over 12" pitch yet I need to go up about 6' from the highest point to clear trees - so I've been looking at roof-mounting the EZ485A tripod plus a short 1-5/8" mast. I can get the height I need this way, but it obviously won't be plumb - can this be fixed?
One concern is that whatever I do has to be quite solid for a 20" dish - the code wind speed for our county is 110 MPH.
Maybe a tower type mast side mounted to the gable end of the house would be preferred; at least I could shim it in two planes to achieve plumb.

Thanks for any help you can give me,
bgeastman

[bobkat]

Hi and welcome to the forum:

You are right that a tripod cannot be mounted flat on a sloped roof; it can be if you mount (straddle) the three legs over the peak. But it would look super ugly way up high on the middle of your roof. Yuk. You are also correct in saying it must be plumb - this is critical. An experienced installer could find a work-around to a crooked dish but it would really look weird. If you intend to motorize the dish you can forget about non-plumb masts - you must have a 100 % plumb mast in this case.

Better solutions abound. Check out this website for a few ideas...

DSS Uni-Mount Home Page

kat