In August 2008 came the offering of a 3.15m dish originally used for SETI for free collection so i jumped at the chance as it was only a few miles down the road in Stockton!
Here it was in its sorry state
Collecting the dish...
August 2013 - I found a photo of the dish i now have which was used for SETI, it was from G0ECP, G4KIR also had the same dish but it had already been 'disposed' of when i found this one!. They were used for Project Argus
One of the signals received with the dish some years ago, not ET but something closer: http://www.setileague.org/editor/skyfill.htm
http://www.setileague.org/tunein/conclude.htm
http://www.setileague.org/photos/miscpix/g0ecp.gif
The dish was in fair condition but did have a few holes in it from some wind damage when it was moved from its original mount but these were easily fixed. The dish was given a good clean up and re-spray from light brown to more discrete black colour.. i am hoping it does not stand out too much..hi
A hole was cut into one of the panels for the fibreglass feed pole and some modification was done to the original polar mount to make it good for my EME setup.
An old scrap trailer was aquired for nothing which was not what i was loking for but it has got my setup up and running, the trailer sides were cut off in a few minutes to leave a flat base to start work installing the mount. The mount is very simple, it is just a 3" bearing mounted on a plate which is on the top of four pieces of box section, the 3" tube from the dish mount slides through the bearing and down into the worm drive coupling made up at the base.
All very simple and is the way i like it..hi
Here are a few photos... Not finished, Still not finished in June 2012!!
Dish Azimuth
Dish Elevation
Dish In operation!
My first time QRV was 16th August and i heard RD3DA calling CQ but did not get back in time to call him on JT65, i managed a easy QSO with Howard G4CCH and also one with Serge UT5JCW to my surprise when he came back to my calls and was also quite easy JT65 contact.
After everyone went QRT i thought i would try to hear my own echoes, maybe being a little optimistic!
Nothing was heard straigt away but afer another dash out in the rain to line up the dish a little better (by sight) i did see on spectrumlab and i did hear the odd weak tome after some cw tests.... GREAT :-)
Echoes in SpectrumLab
My current setup is OK1DFC septum feed with choke ring attached but not tweaked spacings yet
TX: O/P ~100W @ Feed
RX: G4DDK LNA radio is Yaesu FT-736r.
Update 27th September 2008..
Sun noise is measured at 7dB - Somthing not quite right yet...
Feed only: Ground/Cold SKy is ~3.2dB
maybe some matching problem between the feed and LNA?
Also heard DL0SHF in SSB! Yes i know he runs a big station but very nice to hear good SSB signals via the moon for the first time!!
DL0SHF in SSB
