Keith Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 When I moved into this house 14 years ago ( time flies) it came with one of the big satellite dishes that is no longer being used. Are they worth anything other than scrap metal? I'm tired of mowing around it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fireant Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 (edited) This may be a bit redneck, but when I was a kid a friend had one. We took it down and used it as a big saucer sled to pull behind a truck in winter. It was great fun. Or try this: Death Ray Edited October 1, 2008 by Fireant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin J Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 Some folks have been using them as solar collectors to heat steam to drive a tesla turbine. Pretty cool project. Just hook that sucker up! You'd be amazed to see the stuff you can pick up with a C or K band dish. Alot of news crews still bounce back remotes unencrypted that you can pick up. Pretty interesting if your into some of the RF stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckS Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 The call them C-band antennas (or sometimes BUD ). There is still a bunch of analog activity and there is some new digital technology getting put in place. There is high probability that your local TV stations and cable operators use C-band for their feed. Do some looking around on the web for C-band TV. Or just scrap it... Later, Chuck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainmcphersn Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 I believe the last 802.11x wireless record was set with one. Something over 100 miles of transmission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carinab Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 I believe the last 802.11x wireless record was set with one. Something over 100 miles of transmission. Wow! That'd be a heck of a antenna! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Nesbitt Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 Here's one I saw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airedale Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 There's one drive past each weekend that is now a gazebo roof. It doesn't look too bad. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlin Orr Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 I believe the last 802.11x wireless record was set with one. Something over 100 miles of transmission. Wow! That'd be a heck of a antenna! I wonder if you could use it in a rural area to improve your cell reception...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DougBarnes101 Posted October 1, 2008 Share Posted October 1, 2008 My Dad got one from a neighbor that didn't want it any more so he hauled it home and used it for a roof on his dog pin. Works pretty good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J-Ho Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 I've seen a few painted as smiley faces. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 If anybody near you had wireless internet, you could probably use that dish to suck in their signal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainmcphersn Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 This record has been beaten but gives you an idea what can be done with an old mesh antenna. WiFi Shootout 2005 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maineshootah Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 If anybody near you had wireless internet, you could probably use that dish to suck in their signal. <geek speak on> A BUD (Big Ugly Dish) is not going to help you get on a wireless signal around your neighborhood. The problem is that they have an extremely narrow bandwidth and are highly directional, with an 8 - 10' dish, you are talking just a few degrees (2-4) and you would be off the wireless signal. Think of them as a radio laser. They are great for distance assuming that you have exact coordinates that you can aim the dish, however, they are too precise for local wireless, that is why most wireless antenna are a simple single radial that emits radio signals in all directions. The dish on the other hand reflects all the energy in one very precise direction. Now if you lived in the heartland of America and you had a very large farm with neighbors a few miles away, on very flat terrain you could mount the dish at their house and they would then have wireless available to them. However, trees, rocks, hills, etc will degrade the signal. You can get the idea here.. Another example of what this can be used for is here.. EME antennas where ham radio guys direct them at the moon and hear their own echos bounce off. Put it in the local "for sale" publication and I am sure someone will come get it. <geek speak off> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 He is a guy in a city, and with a bit of height to work from. He is using a small dish. He picks up just under 200 signals, with about a quarter of them unsecured. Oh...he didn't need a vice to do his hack-sawing either. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJwOpJjYKqA...feature=related Interesting... But, yeah...I'd just get ride of the BUD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kimel Posted October 5, 2008 Share Posted October 5, 2008 They can be polished and turned into incredibly efficient solar concentrators. I used to work in that industry a zillion years ago. One day we got a call from a customer complaining his "dish" wasn't working. When we arrived we found that instead of repainting his several year old 9 foot spun aluminum dish he had decided to buff it out to a nice glossy shine and then wax it the previous fall so that snow wouldn't stick in the dish. The feed horn (cast and machined aluminum) was mostly just slag splattered on the dish and on the ground. His polished dish had worked great until the spring equinox when the sun tracks the same pathway as the geosynchronous satellites. I probably still have the pictures around here somewhere. Even on the painted dishes you could tell where the focal point was just by pointing the dish near the sun and feeling for the warmth with your hand. If you can find an efficient way to gather that energy from the focal point and use it while getting the dish to track the sun (not that hard, actually) you can do some significant damage to your energy bills. The spun dishes are useful at lots of frequencies depending on who made them and how good their tolerances were. The petal dishes somewhat less so because they are optimized for C band (4 GHz) and generally tolerances were not very carefully maintained. The mesh dishes tend to be very inefficient reflectors much above 5 GHz. They aren't all that great at C band actually unless very carefully erected and maintained but were more of a marketing gimic than anything else. They were cheaper to manufacture, cheaper to ship and looked better when installed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwx40x40 Posted October 5, 2008 Share Posted October 5, 2008 Best use I ever saw for one was, this club I used to be a member of had one placed horizontal next to a shooting box by the plate rack. I whole was cut in the middle and a 5 gallon bucket placed underneath. It was a great automatic brass collector. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Posted October 7, 2008 Author Share Posted October 7, 2008 Best use I ever saw for one was, this club I used to be a member of had one placed horizontal next to a shooting box by the plate rack. I whole was cut in the middle and a 5 gallon bucket placed underneath. It was a great automatic brass collector. That actually sounds practical. If I was still match director I'd bring it to the range and find some silly way to use it as a prop and then conveniently leave it there for future matches. Guess I'll just have to start cutting it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pittbug Posted October 18, 2008 Share Posted October 18, 2008 You could turn it into a gazebo: http://www.ranum.com/fun/projects/gazebo/index.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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