Fire dish experiment

[sidha]

I found a cast iron fire bowl last night, thought I'd see how it would do for a dish.
It works! For getting NASA on DN, anyway. About 70 for highest quality on a first rather rough setup. The reflective diameter is just over 26 inches, and it's probably around 50% efficient due to irregular surface and feedhorn mismatch. Definitely a deep dish. I might give it a try on Ku for some of the strongest transponders. I saw it in a dumpster, new with an edge crack. The first cast iron dish for me and my dish farm.

 

[USMCGrunt0307]

You ought to try mounting the LNB in an offset position...your losing about 50% of your strength from having it center mounted and the pole its attached to doesnt help much either.

 

[jcb287]

I love it....nice portable dish.:up

I wonder how one of those round aluminum sleds would work, I used as a kid..

 

[sidha]

Offset results would be limited by rapidly increasing losses when deviating from center on a dish designed for prime focus. 5 degrees either way, off center boresight, is about the max deviation to add a co-feed, a compromise that would further limit the gain by more shadowing and loss of focus. With that in mind, a total offset arrangement would require a very large prime focus dish to overcome the loss of efficiency. On the other extreme, try making an offset dish perform as a prime focus. Try making a chicken quack.

 

[sidha]

I love it....nice portable dish.:up

I wonder how one of those round aluminum sleds would work, I used as a kid..

I found one of those saucers, it was mine, when I closed my parent's estate. It was half buried in the floor of an old chicken coop, beat-up from years of winter fun. I set it up like the fire dish, for DN, and it worked. Hard to imagine it could, if you saw its condition. I'll have to get it out and add a picture to this thread, of it in operation.

 

[turbosat]

Neat!
I always heard those DBS sats put out so much power you can pick up signals with a 9inch aluminum pie plate, but I haven't tried that lol.

 

[Sadoun]

Nice project. It may not be reliable, but heck it was worth your try. Good job.

 

[dixsatellite]

Slap your logo on that puppy and watch your sales increase 10 fold!

 

[GreatFTA]

Wow! Neat! Before long many will find reflectors that will work. You may have started a new trend!

 

[GreatFTA]

THAT is a poor man's FTA dish... LOL

 

[GrumpyGuy]

A tip of the hat to you, Sidha - very creative.

 

[amc1]

creative bro ,like to try something like that sometime. lol.

 

[iafirebuff]

VERY unique! GOOD JOB!

 

[Corrado]

Can we see a picture of it?

 

[bloomdog]

What is a "fire bowl"?? Never heard of such a thing...........

 

[Inno]

I think it's something you'd use to make a small fire for out on the deck/patio. It would likely have had some sort of mesh cover and a stand.

 

[FTABman0]

I found a cast iron fire bowl last night, thought I'd see how it would do for a dish.

Very creative! I seen a couple weeks ago some that made a dish out of Lego's & tin foil over in the UK! He had used it for the UK Sky Digital. He was selling it also on EBay! It worked just like yours did! I guess for those strong satellites up there it does not take much to receive signals! Very creative indeed!

Nice Pictures :up