[amsat-bb] "Big-Dish" project.

["Frederick M. Spinner" <fspinner@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm starting to try to get things together to put up a big-dish ala 
W0LMD-style for AO-40.  I think it'll take me months, but the things I do 
that will be useful to the AMSAT-bb community I'm going to try to share.

One observation is that the "sun outage" time on the Clarke Belt is 
approaching, for the Midwest anyway and probably the rest of the US/World 
this upcoming weekend is a good time for this.  Since AO-40 follows the 
Clark Belt +/- a few degrees, this is probably a good time for everyone to 
do a site survey if a new system is planned.  For me, if I can find a 
location on my new lot that won't be shadowed during daylight hours from 
about 10/4 to 10/7 (wx permitting) the sun tracks the Clark Belt throughout 
the day (approx, on 10/6 its within 2 degrees for example) this should show 
that I have found a good spot (+/-) for AO-40 reception.

A good prediction tool (aimed at TVRO geostationary satellite use, but still 
really cool nonetheless) is at 
http://perso.numericable.fr/~gjullien/satellite.htm
this should help you to visualize what I said above.

The other useful piece is that I've made 1:1 templates for the W0LMD (see 
his http://www.ultimatecharger.com/dish.html then "dish feeds"
page) circular 2.4 GHz feed.  I'm intending on doing the same for the 1269 
circular/dual band feed.  The format is in .PDF, and seems to print 1:1 on 
everything I've tried printing it on, but please double check the "ruler" on 
the top of the link for scale accuracy.

The page:  http://www.fredspinner.com/W0FMS/NewPatch

Fred W0FMS

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