My SAT-playground

[RimaNTSS]

My cut-saw is up and running. It cuts metal parts very good. However, it made lots of sparks and they were flying all around, so I made small device which moves majority of sparks sideways.I am certainly will not be removing this angle-grinder out of the construction, for another angle-grinder work I bought another grinder.

 

[Trust]

Clever !!

 

[RimaNTSS]

As I was gently kicked off from another "holly cow" thread, and that was for just expressing my opinion on the way I would do some things, and all my postings were erased pretending that was spam, will post here my thoughts about ideal LNB holder for PFA. And that does not matter what kind of PFA is that... Prodelin, Cnannel Master, Kathrein, No Name.... any PFA. I just made a drawing where in green is standard 60,3mm pipe clamp, in blue- holder construction made of plate or 20mm metal stripes, in pink - scalar ring of C-band LNB. 3 x 8mm holes for connection of feedarms. Minimum details- maximum performance. That is IMHO.

 

[RimaNTSS]

Can somebody measure outer diameter (or radius of C-band scalar ring) . I made my drawing assuming that diameter is 200mm. I do not have any scalars on my hands ATM, so, can only guess. Thanks in advance.

 

[Archive-8]

155mm prime focus scaler

 

[RimaNTSS]

Thanks @Chris1979 ! Is that standard C-band scaler or there are some variations in size, depending on brand?

 

[Archive-8]

Thanks @Chris1979 ! Is that standard C-band scaler or there are some variations in size, depending on brand?

It's the one that comes as standard, with the titanium c1-Pll.

I also use the offset one.

 

[RimaNTSS]

OK, there it is, scalar is 155mm and LNB holder 60,3mm (standard). Will try to make it someday (not tomorrow)

 

[Trust]

Can somebody measure outer diameter (or radius of C-band scalar ring) View attachment 85405 . I made my drawing assuming that diameter is 200mm. I do not have any scalars on my hands ATM, so, can only guess. Thanks in advance.

I do have a conicle feedhorn with a 160 mm outside dia .
Right now I'm prepairing 2 AV-COM scalarings to make them at the correct angle as close as possible together for my friend PaulvR . (each 2º offset)

 

[RimaNTSS]

That how it will maybe look like if I do some metalwork.

 

[RimaNTSS]

Some continuation to PFA LNB holder. Not perfect ..... but who is perfect?! Maybe finish it over the weekend, if not lazy.

 

[RimaNTSS]

Finished with holder. Perhaps it makes sense to adopt it for another LNB holder would be attached for second LNB.

 

[samoloko]

Rima
that Is a holder for pfa but using 40 mm diameter lnbs ?
how did you bend clamps or they are ready bended

 

[Trust]

Cant be 40 mm collar , impossible to get lnb in it .

 

[RimaNTSS]

Those clamps are standard 60,3mm But for Ku LNB it is possible to use something like this where outer diameter is 60mm and inner diameter is 40mm.

 

[RimaNTSS]

My favorite Ku-band LNB for PFA is GI-209P. Its feedhorn diameter (pink) is ~75mm. There is also LNB holder in the set, but it is made out of simple metal. I will try to make new holder, little bit smaller and simpler. This time will use 42,6mm clamp (green) which holds 40mm LNB tight enough. In blue is plate to be made.

 

[RimaNTSS]

I've got 3 dirty dishes another day and places them in friend's garage for a while. I think that friend was not so happy to every day observe how dirty they are. So, I went to his place today and did some washing. They look much better now.
Previous owner of those dishes shipped bunch of them from Canada long time ago and stored in his shed. I also picked up some back frames, but no feedarms. However, who cares about feedarms, anyway I am going to make them new.

 

[archive10]

Previous owner of those dishes shipped bunch of them from Canada long time ago and stored in his shed.

Funny design of dishes. Of course they do look to be real fibre-glass dishes, not SMC or ABS (SMW) dishes.
(Reminds me a bit of boat hulls).

Notably, the performance of the dish is never better than the mould (mold?) it was made from.
So, obviously someone did some maths, and got busy with some plywood/clay/plaster to make the mould, and then busy with resin and glass fibre matts and mesh to make the final product. And hope they got it all right, and that the shape was paraboloid enough etc.

However - if I were a small fibreglass outfit, looking for new stuff to grow my build-a-boat business from in the late 80's, I might decide to hop on the satellite dish wagon. And when considering to do som dish design from scratch, I'd probably glance heavily at my CM/Prodelin SMC dish, and decide that the surface of a SMC dish product was darned close to what I needed (unless I wanted to try some weird antenna shapes) - and probaly make a mould from that instead of all the calculation and plywood and what have you.
I would probably also borrow the size of the mounting frame, but as I was making a mould of the front of the dish, I would not benefit from the support rib structure in the back of am SMC dish. Rather a square boxy thingy with a few holes would do.

And then I might just, conincidentally, end up with something that looks surprisingly like the dishes in your pictures...

But then again - that's just me thinking out loud of what I'd do...

 

[RimaNTSS]

It is definitely fiber-glass. And it also reminded me some "How do they do it" series about fiber-made boat hulls, where they had special machine to make small pieces of fiber-glass and then gun them to glued surface. When I washed dishes today, I clearly seen lots of pieces of fiber-glass and some of them were sharp enough to spoil my friend's sponge (now I owe him a new sponge ;) ).
Unfortunately I did not make any measurements of those dishes and reason is quiet stupid - we could not find a tape at friend's garage!
Did I show you more such a dishes? They still there, and also some 1,2m (same design) available.

 

[RimaNTSS]

Made some more drawing. Will print those pictures out and use for cutting metal parts.