How much wind can a dish antenna stand?

[StevenA]

Just wondering, since Mother Nature seems to have Florida in its sights this hurricane season. How much wind can a satellite antenna take before getting blown away? Does anybody take down their antenna as part of their hurricane preparations?

[TSRich]

I wouldn't want to subject my dish to 70+ mph winds if I could avoid it. I don't think the dish itself is going to take wind damage, but the mounting of the dish to the post at least on my setup was only a few small bolts that would easily be ripped apart given enough force.

[teampozer]

The dish... tighten the bolts and hang on... I wouldn't worry about it. Large UHF/VHF antennas on standard masts are what I'd be worried about. I installed some guy wire on mine before Frances and it held up just great. Now, higher winds could pose more of a problem but I hope we don't have to find out.

[Dknow]

All I know is that I saw a mobile home park in Holiday that got hit by a tornado during Frances and the round DTV dish ended up bending at the foot where the bolts enter the roof. The dish flew off but it must have taken a hell of a lot of force to bend that metal before letting loose. That metal must be at least 1/4" thick. Mind you these trailers all lost their windows and some of them lost their sheet metal roofs. So these had to have been at least 80 MPH winds. It made me feel better about my Phase III dish sticking around for the next storm.

[Floyd]

With the latest winds from Frances I had a couple of customers call me with dish problems. One had the dish pushed back a little at the foot adjustment, so that was an easy fix. The other must have had a tornado. The dish itself was OK, but was hanging from the brick chimney by the cable. All the 5/16" anchor bolts had been bent over and sheared off near the head. New anchor bolts and it was back in service. Amazing that the bolts sheared and the dish was undamaged.
I also had to re-aim a couple of c-band dishes that had turned in the wind.