Thread: Land Anchors

they call it a ground anchor in the uk

and they are becoming very used in competion trials in the uk.......

if you look at some 4x4 magazines that cover the uk landrovers you will notice alot of them have now got them mounted on the front bull bar for easy access

i don't know how they perform in the sand but in the mud they are ment to be awesome!!!

as once they dig in the more you winch or pull on them the deeper they dig into the ground........

they are i think ment to be the next best thing when there are no trees around to winch off.....

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/scorpion-racing-grou...1QQcmdZViewItem

alot of people think they can be a bit cumbersome...........i suppose its just a case of how prepared you want to be

http://www.pullpal.com/quotes.html

dullbird

ARB sell them:

http://www.arb.com.au/recovery_essentials.htm

Do NOT buy a PRT, they are the sinlge most useless version of a ground anchor we have ever tested here in Whyalla.

We wrote a full report on the thing and then returned it.

To give you and Idea we nicknamed it "Dougless"

We now have one from Smithy in Victoria....

Its called "Doug"

Cheers
Mike

Have you got any more details on the "Smithy" one? I did a google search on all sorts of permutations but didn't find a match.
Thanks
David

Hey tombraider,

Do you have a link for the one you have that works?

hmm......spudboy beat me to it!

It sort of depends what you're after.

The fold out shovel type of ground anchor that you see on the front of winch challenge vehicles is fine for that type of event but that's about it. They are very awkward to stow and are usless unless you're using it in the right type of mud... :? Sand, forget it. They just pop out!

One of the best ground anchors is the type used by the armed forces. Big, long plate with at least half a dozen (or more depending on the type of surface) long stakes that you drive through it, into the ground.

If you're not in a hurry, the spare wheel tick works but you have to dig a very deep hole for it!!!

Mark.

I have an auger style ground anchor with different blade attachments for different ground conditions.

Only used in once since I owned it - at the LROC Advanced Driver Training. Worked great and hacked up the ground a lot less than I have seen some of the other PRT style anchors. Just had to unscrew it back out of the ground.

I picked it up after the one time I really needed it - instantly and totally bogged in talcom powder like sand below high tide mark on Hawksnest Beach with the tide coming in! Did I mention it was at night?

Had gone down the beach to try to get to some harder packed sand because the tracks up higher were really deep and soft.

Survived to tell the story and the photos of the 'Great (Sand) Wall of China' that kept back the water are a classic but don't really do it justice after surviving the incoming tide and a restless sleep until I could flag someone to pull me out next morning. Boy was I glad to see those old fishermen!

I had done driver training (with Toyota Club) only a couple of weeks before so I knew what to do just had not had the cash to buy all the gear at the time. Big mistake and I would have done just about anything to have a hand winch and the various odds and sods once I realised just how much s**t I was potentially in.

Had a pajero then and had been looking for a quiet camp site up the beach for a quiet evening camp with the girlfriend.

Saw the light after surviving that night - bought a defender and married the girlfriend. Funnily enough now have virtually every conceivable piece of recovery gear stowed away in the back of the truck and my new outlook (and truck!) has meant that I have rarely had to use any of it.

Anyway back to the land anchor - made in New Zealand and a very impressive piece of kit it is too. Bought it (unused) off a nice old fella who reckoned that he was too old and weak to cope with the rigours of offroad camping anymore. More luck for me as he had had an offroad scare like me and so when he tracked this ground anchor down to the manufacturer in NZ he decided to get the FULL set of blades and accessories while he was at it.

I could have used the spare tyre of course and still could but prefer to have the right gear for the job rather than risk trashing the rim or having to dig half way to China to get the wheel into potentially rocky ground. In the sand would have even been happy to try a sand bollard but without a winch there was nothing to drag it out with.

Cheers,
Cameron