You want the guy line attached to the stake right at the ground. Think lever - with the guy line above ground level, the portion of the force on the stake from the guy line that is perpendicular to the stake has a lever arm to pull on the stake. The higher above ground level, the longer the lever arm for that portion of the force and the better the force can rotate the stake out of the ground. With the guy line right at ground level, the lever arm is essentially zero, not quite, but very close - TeeDee got into a lot of calculus here which "integrated the forces between the ground and the stake" to compute the pivot point for the ground forces on the stake (I know that is what he did because my engineering GF just said so - she said she could follow what he did, but couldn't reproduce it
- a mathematical physicist's world view is just soooo very different )
The worst possible guy line/stake arrangement:
The stake is high out of the ground, the guy line is attached at the top of the stake, yielding the longest possible lever arm and the first angle above is less than 90 degrees so that the guy line is essentially pulling the stake up.
I see people doing this all the time with those shepherds hook stakes. The stake pulls out with the first wind gust and they wonder why.
Those nice cords attached to the tops of stakes are really meant for pulling the stake out of the ground and not to tie off to.
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