[amsat-bb] AO-40 dish

[Glenn Little <glennlittle@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Has anyone tried a surplus Starpoint dish for AO-40? I just got one. It is 
about 6 feet in diameter and appears to be parabolic. I is aluminum and has 
no covering over the dish. The dish is made up of aluminum tubing, bent to 
conform to the design curve of the dish, spaced about two inches apart. The 
tubing is about 1/2 inch diameter. The dish was originally used in the 1800 
- 2200 MHz range (or there abouts). The dish still has the feed mounted to 
it and it appears to be a helix (cannot tell for sure without taking it 
apart). The cable termination to the feed will take some rework as I think 
it is what is called a pin connector. It has a flange about three inches in 
diameter and the hard line had an termination on it that mated with this. I 
think I can fabricate a disk to mate with the flange, mount a type N 
connector on it, and solder a pin to the center of the type N connector to 
mate with the center of the pin connector. Harder to describe than do, I think.

Any thoughts? Pointing might be a problem. Thought of building a yripod 
mounted to the dish and manually point it for the major part of the pass.

73
Glenn
WB4UIV



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Glenn Little                                            QCWA  LM 28417
Amateur Callsign:  WB4UIV            wb4uiv@amsat.org   AMSAT LM 2178
QTH:  Goose Creek, SC USA (EM92xx)   EC Berkeley County ARRL  TAPR
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