Hello Roger,
Thanks for posting this! I've got some tower work to do, and have been waiting to get my grid dish finished and tested before tilting the tower over. I've been waiting for AO-51's S-band transmitter to use as a test signal.
However, the geostationary and Molniya birds should be much easier to track! I'd especially like to find one that is similar in ERP to AO-40 or P3E.
I received this BBQ type dish a few years ago, and screened it with aluminum screen the night before AO-40 died. It did not have a feed or feed support, so I'll have to experiment with a few different designs.
The dish looks like the Andrew grid dishes, possibly model 26? I haven't computed the focal length, or anything on this dish yet. I used a homebrew helix to feed my Primestar dish on AO-40, but might want to try a patch feed on this dish.
I'm also not sure how I'm going to support the feed. I've read from folks that used angle channel mounted to the dish's center as a feed support, and have also noticed that my dish has holes drilled in each corner, possibly for feed support arms? I've also seen pictures of dishes where guys used 2x2 square wood through the dish, as both a feed support and also a place to hang counterweights.
I'd appreciate any thoughts on this dish, and also perhaps someone on the list has found a satellite downlink suitable for testing an AO-40 quality groundstation?
Thanks. 73,
Kyle Yoksh K0KN Olathe, Kansas
--- Original Message ---
Message: 13 Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:34:03 -0400 From: "Roger Kolakowski" Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: 2.4Ghz satellites and signals ? To: "Tim Tuck" ,"AMSAT-BB" amsat-bb@amsat.org Message-ID: 003c01c8eb25$ae247000$0200a8c0@Tanguray Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Depending how wide your IF is...this list is fun:
Roger WA1KAT