Does anyone know how to draw up plans to make a 5mt or 6mt satellite dish?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Does anyone know how to draw up plans to make a 5mt or 6mt satellite dish?

chrisbaby

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#116789 9-May-2013 23:48

As you may know after Christmas you will no longer be able to receive satellite TV from Australia because the broadcasters are moving to a new system called vast. The new vast system will have a guaranteed 17 free to air channels plus if you can get a modified card it will increase to around 40 channels the signal will be very week in fact it will only be what is known as spill.

Never the less a 5 or 6 MT dish should give you a pretty good signal all thro there will be rain fade from time to time.

To by a dish commercial one can cost as much as $20,000 but I have the skills to make one using colour steel and light weight box section

I have no idea how to work out the parabolic reflector and that is where I need help

grant_k

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#814936 10-May-2013 00:13

I hope you are living on a block of land somewhere, well out of sight of a public road. If so, no problem, but if you are in a city, this size of dish will run foul of city council bylaws.

Sky dishes use an "Offset Feed" as shown in this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_antenna

This webpage could be useful for you in working out the profile needed:

http://mscir.tripod.com/parabola/

chrisbaby

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#814942 10-May-2013 01:10

no i live in town but have a nice hidden place so no on will see it and there is good line of site to the satellite
and i wont tell if you wont tell lol

hdinsider

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#814963 10-May-2013 07:30

If anyone asks just say it's a sculpture!

For Ku band reception you will need the dish to be really accurate in shape- that's why the real ones cost so much.

don't mess with me.... i'm the hd insider....

chrisbaby

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#815968 11-May-2013 22:21

Yes from what i have found out I may well be wasting my time

grant_k

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#815969 11-May-2013 22:28

chrisbaby: Yes from what i have found out I may well be wasting my time

Could be very difficult to do it by hand I think. With a CNC machine and and some fancy metal bending machinery it would no doubt be possible, but not really feasible for a one-off.

Now if you could do it with a 3D printer and then paint the plastic with some metallic paint, that would be interesting...

SATTV

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#815972 11-May-2013 22:37

Back in 1986 or so, I saw plans on how to build your own prime focus dish.
You need to calculate the radius and the parobla.
See this site.
http://www.nairaland.com/657626/diy-design-fabricate-own-satellite
Cut out a piece of ply to the 1/2 parabola
Scribe it around a large amount of sand.
Once you are happy with your sandcastle, pour resin over the mound and wait for it to set.
Viloa you are done.
You could use this as a plug to make a steel one.
20k sounds a bit high for a 6m dish, I can understans if solid being that price but you should be able to get big petals cheaper than that.

I never built one but was very keen to do so, You should use moulding sand as it is a lot finer.

Back then, satelite dishes were only C band and were illegal in NZ belive it or not.

Cheers
John

I know enough to be dangerous

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nickb800

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#815974 11-May-2013 22:42

hdinsider: If anyone asks just say it's a sculpture!

Sounds legit, corrugated iron passes for art in this country!

chrisbaby

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#817127 14-May-2013 00:27

I spoke to an expert who told me he tried making them about ten years ago using tig wielding and a custom made roller.
They could not get it good enough there was still too much signal loss

Also the moulded sand system works very well making boat hulls and such but is not good enough for my needs.
It looks like I might have to go fibre optic with a vpn and use net flicks
or some other provider.