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Did that "lantern reflector" really work ??

h
Reply to
hamilton
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The trick is finding the phase center of the feed and of course, the focus of the dish. Trial and error and a known signal source location seems to work best.

Primestar was TV receive only, so you're safe. It was original a cable operator consortium thrown together to convince the FCC that cable companies were providing equitable service to marginal rural communities as an alternative to providing expensive cable plant and service.

What you might have is the original Hughes DirecPC dish, which was quite similar looking. It was sold for internet access. That abomination was receive only on the dish from the satellite for the downlink, with a dialup modem as the uplink. Later versions included a transmitter and were 2-way RF. The name later morphed into DirecWay and HughesNet.

That dish might be a problem because it may have been designed to cover two orbital slots with each half of the antenna (much the same as a dual and triple LNB oval DBS dish). In effect, only about half the dish area is used for each satellite. This makes a particularly lousy dish for point to point or for snooping on satellites. However, I'm not sure and can't check my DirecPC dish as a tree fell on it last winter.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Define "work"?

I think you mean this kludge: It "worked" only because the stock rubber ducky antennas found on commodity wireless routers are so awful, that doing anything will probably constitute an improvement. In my case, the reflector did direct some of the RF in the general direction which it was aimed, but was the wrong shape and the wrong height to do it efficiently. The aluminum was a hemispherical shape instead of parabolic. It was also very stiff and difficult to bend. You can do better with a flat sheet of aluminum, aluminum foil covered cardboard, a pie tin, or wok reflector.

The dish "feed" was also non-optimum as most of the radiated RF wandered off in directions that didn't hit the reflector. The result is different trasnmit and receive gains. That's a problem with any such retrofit where the feed isn't matched to the reflector.

More (and somewhat better) reflectors: Hmmm... looks like the site is down. Try: instead.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Yes, it was a Hughes Direct TV dish, but the Primestar dishes were the same shape. I have one of those too. The arms are a bit different, but that is to reflect the plumbing.

Reply to
miso

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