Ron,
In general, dish antennas should be used at frequencies that have wavelengths shorter than one tenth the diameter or width of the dish and the dish must have a suitable surface smoothness and accuracy. Without knowing more, I suspect the two dishes will work for the 2.4 GHz through 10 GHz bands. Of course, you will have to design and build suitable feeds for the dishes. One of the best references is: http://www.w1ghz.org/antbook/preface.htm
John WA4WDL
-------------------------------------------------- From: "Ron Overdrive" ronoverdrive@tehfurry.com Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 1:33 PM To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: [amsat-bb] Sat Dishes and P3E Q's
I am curious how things are coming along with Phase 3 Express (P3E) as the current official websites don't tell me much. The last bit of updates seem to be from 2005 with an expected launch date of 2007 - 2008 which was 2 - 3 years ago. Since there's no info about it being active I'm guessing P3E hasn't be launched yet.
The reason I'm asking is because I came across 2 Dish Network dishes that a friend had sitting in his junk room that he acquired from the previous owner of his home. One is a smaller dish labeled Dish 500 which I'm guessing is a Ku-Band dish and a larger one labeled Dish Plus which I'm assuming is a C-band dish. As you probably have guessed I want to use these for AMSAT work and I don't know much about parabolic dishes so all I have are guesses for what bands they work on so if anyone can point me in the right direction to figure this out please do. _______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb