Using ex-satellite dishes

Your local household waste disposal area (tip) is a great source of parabolic dishes which are very usable on the microwave amateur bands - and it's environmentally friendly to re-cycle them!

The picture shows a recycled Sky mini dish being used on 5.6GHz - the feed is a WA5VJB log-periodic PCB feed http://www.wa5vjb.com/products1.html – these are available in the UK from G4DDK. http://www.g4ddk.com/Prices.html (see the 5.6Ghz wiki page for more details)

Finding the feed point

The easiest way to find the feed point is just carefully replace the LNB with the feed or replacement LNB in exactly the same position. However this is not always possible - but luckily there are a great number of pages on the web showing how to find the point:

Online calculator to find the feed point of an offset dish: http://www.satsig.net/pointing/finding-dish-offset-angle.htm

http://www.satsig.net/22-deg-offset-dish.htm

http://www.john-legon.co.uk/offsetdish.htm

http://www.ntms.org/files/Nov2015/Fun_with_Off-set_dish.pdf

This page has a calculator for parabolic dishes (not many of those at your local tip): http://www.qsl.net/pa2ohh/jsparabolic.htm

Feeds for dishes

Excellent design for 3.4 and 5.6GHz by Brian G4NNS: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/g4nns/FeedHorn.html

http://www.w1ghz.org/antbook/conf/dualband_feedhorn.pdf

http://www.w1ghz.org/10g/dualhorn.htm

10GHz feed horn for Sky Dish made using standard UK copper plumbing bits: http://www.g3pho.free-online.co.uk/microwaves/horn.htm