Well after spending alot of my time on sunday stuck and not suceading to winch myself out, until i was hitched to 2 cars and a tree i am starting to think that a ground anchor may be a good idea.

So do i go for a large spade type one?

What can peaople recomend?

Will they actually be useful as a winching aid, when im that stuck?

I have a budget and can do some fabrication but my welding is week so i would have to tack it together and get some one to finish it off for me. Or do i just give up and buy one didnt really want to spend much over 100, there is one on ebay at the moment see the link below what do people think?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...A%3AIT&rd=1

Welding doesn't look that neat on the eBay one either

Spade are good, but the angle of the blade is critical, you'd really need to copy a known good anchor.

If you off-road alone - go plate and pins and a big sledgehammer.

Yep - what Andy said ^^^

No trees here so I carry two most of the time, a KittyGripper™ (made by Hybrid_from_Hell and loosely based on the Pull Pal model only with more bends in it, well mine has anyway ) and a tube/pin military anchor, 8 x long pins going through a drilled heavy tube at angles into the ground.

In really soft ground (deep boggy peat for example) you won't get anything that you can sensible carry in the vehicle to hold very well, but the two chained together usually gets me out though it has been touch and go on a few occasions. Spade anchor is quick and easy to set but if the spade goes right underground it can be a bugger to get out, tube anchor is hard to carry, hard work to hammer the pins in and hard work to get them out again.

If you are that stuck then I would say no it would probably not have helped you, the power of my winch vastly exceeds the holding capacity of even both anchors chained together in most ground, if you had a tube and pin anchor into hard clay or something it may be a different story but the anchor holding strength is by far the weakest point in my recovery system, for the terrain I drive in. The spade anchors are not as strong in terms of design as the pin/tube because they tend to be designed to light weight to make them easy to carry, if you build the whole thing out of 10mm steel to make it indestructable then you can't lift it! so it is all swings and roundabouts, the pin/tube is 3 trips from the vehicle to the anchor point to carry it all there and 3 trips to bring it back. I've bent or broken/repaired most of the bits on my Kitty (spade, top arm and back arm...) in the 2 years or so I have had it, and have bent the 20mm thick pins (x8) on the tube anchor so there really isn't a foolproof solution. Plant lots of trees wherever you are likely to get stuck

It looks like a pretty poor copy of a D44 anchor to me.

As Andy said blade angle is critical.

Plate and pins type work very well in just about all conditions.

I've had a few occasions were it has been just about impossible to set plough type ground anchors, particularly if you're trying to winch over the crest of a bank.

I bought a ground anchor from this chap a couple of years ago, but it was of a much heavier/stronger design than the one shown. I have been very happy with it. The chap is a damn good fabricator, so perhaps you could e-mail him and ask him to build a heavier version for you. If you want pictures of mine, I will post them up.

The "tube/pin military anchor" sounds very interesting.
I guess it would be easy for a person to copy ?

If you have a picture of yours Stephen, can you post it, I feel a new project is looming in the air.


Todd.

Easy to make/copy (i'll post some pictures of the military type if you want)

you need a large flat (or slightly curved/angled) plate) about 2~2.5 feet long. a beefy ring on one end to fit a shackle/hook onto. you'll then need 8 or so holes drilling through the plate to fit the pins through.

the pins.... the proper military ones are cast, with a hole through one end, the hole is a) to tie stuff to (should you use just several pins together instead of the whole plate assy) and to poke another pin through, to "twist" it to get it out of the ground. hard to explain in a few words (especially when i've got to get out on a job! )

that reinforced concrete steel rod stuff would be ideal. you need beefy stuff, like 3/4" (19mm) so it won't bend. grind a point on one end so it goes in the gorund easily.

although i'm sure Anchor Supplies were selling them fairly cheaply, about £80 for the plate and 8 pins.

I've seen a DI~Y version using angle iron.

Yes they were because I ordered some at work for somebody a couple of years ago, and IIRC the price was indeed £80.

The tube design is better IMHO because the pin goes through in 2 places so cannot twist if the pins start to pull through the ground. It still comes out in soft ground though...

You can see the tube and pins here



and as they are carried in the back of the 90 under a false floor - takes up almost no room at all



better shot of tube



set in the ground (just!)...



and then not set in the ground.... this happens a lot in peat!



Kitty is not Milemarker proof either and just pulls through under the ground where it is soft...



so then you end up with both chained together....



...and both chained together was only to shift this which I would have got through if I'd been awake and put my foot down anyway :



A big tree would have been useful at that point

HTH