Antenna question

[AssTelescope]

The other day I posted a few pictures of this dish like antenna I took from
my parents roof. If you live in Sydney you'll remember a service called
Galaxy TV. Thats the cheap ass dish!

Ive read from the reply posts (thanks) its only good for UHF and picking up
distant radio stations.

Does the quality of metal affect the signals that you can pick up or
something else? There's something about it that makes me think It could be
used to do something more, VHF, other bands, raw satellite video? Is there
equipment I can buy to make it more useful?

Very bored here and need to do something with this piece of junk.
ta

 

[Active8]

On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 21:13:53 +1100, AssTelescope wrote:

The other day I posted a few pictures of this dish like antenna I took from
my parents roof. If you live in Sydney you'll remember a service called
Galaxy TV. Thats the cheap ass dish!

Ive read from the reply posts (thanks) its only good for UHF and picking up
distant radio stations.

Does the quality of metal

It should be conductive. Any mesh should be <= 1/12 to 1/20 *
wavelength sized "holes".

affect the signals that you can pick up or
something else? There's something about it that makes me think It could be
used to do something more, VHF, other bands, raw satellite video? Is there
equipment I can buy to make it more useful?

Very bored here and need to do something with this piece of junk.
ta

I can't find the picture but with a suitable feed situated at the
focal point you can estimate the gain you might achieve with

2 pi A
---------
lambda^2

roughly, at 50% efficiency.

A = Area

lambda = wavelength.

--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 21:13:53 +1100, AssTelescope wrote:

The other day I posted a few pictures of this dish like antenna I took from
my parents roof. If you live in Sydney you'll remember a service called
Galaxy TV. Thats the cheap ass dish!

Ive read from the reply posts (thanks) its only good for UHF and picking up
distant radio stations.

Does the quality of metal affect the signals that you can pick up or
something else? There's something about it that makes me think It could be
used to do something more, VHF, other bands, raw satellite video? Is there
equipment I can buy to make it more useful?

Very bored here and need to do something with this piece of junk.

You're probably out of luck. From the pictures I saw, the thing in the
middle looks very much like a microwave feedhorn. Yes, it's a cheap dish,
but apparently able to pick up satellite broadcasts. But it's probably in
the range of 3000 MHz, which is way, way above the UHF broadcast band. You
could theoretically pick up satellite signals, or for that matter, radars
from nearby airports, but the rest of the crap you'd need to make any
sense of it isn't worth the amount of money you'd have to spend.

Sorry. )-;
Rich

 

[Active8]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:18:29 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:

On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 21:13:53 +1100, AssTelescope wrote:

The other day I posted a few pictures of this dish like antenna I took from
my parents roof. If you live in Sydney you'll remember a service called
Galaxy TV. Thats the cheap ass dish!

Ive read from the reply posts (thanks) its only good for UHF and picking up
distant radio stations.

Does the quality of metal affect the signals that you can pick up or
something else? There's something about it that makes me think It could be
used to do something more, VHF, other bands, raw satellite video? Is there
equipment I can buy to make it more useful?

Very bored here and need to do something with this piece of junk.

You're probably out of luck. From the pictures I saw, the thing in the
middle looks very much like a microwave feedhorn. Yes, it's a cheap dish,
but apparently able to pick up satellite broadcasts. But it's probably in
the range of 3000 MHz, which is way, way above the UHF broadcast band.

UHF: 300 MHz - 3 GHz

New band every octave. ELF VLF LF MF HF VHF

You
could theoretically pick up satellite signals, or for that matter, radars
from nearby airports, but the rest of the crap you'd need to make any
sense of it isn't worth the amount of money you'd have to spend.

Sorry. )-;
Rich

--
Best Regards,
Mike