Thermal Connection

mount the bowl on a bearing a have it spin :p

if going for the heating idea, maybe some think like the selfregulation heating cable meant for keeping gutter and roofs ice free?

-Lasse

If the problem is snow buildup inside the concave reflector, could you stitch up a cloth cover? Even if you had to replace the cloth once a year, it'd be a lot less snow buildup onto a flat near-vertical surface of a taut bit of nylon.

I suppose a circular windshield wiper would be too gimmicky...

You don't need to epoxy the resistors, just use some of those neat ali cased heatsink resistors on the back of the dish with something like cavity wall filling aerosol foam insulation spayed on afterwards, using a taped together cardboard former to hold it all together while the foam sets. Then just drill a few holes to drain the water away.

The more difficult problem might be temperature control, the power input required will vary considerably. An ice stat at one end and high temp cutoff at the other, with solid state relay might be the simplest solution...

Regards,

Chris

Your elevation angle should be low, so why not just a shed or a doghouse, with the dish pointing out the open end?

John

How about mounting a vibrator to the disc to shake the snow off it?

Use those bolt-on power resistors, then get some spray-on foam insulation. Better if you can get a larger bowl and fill the space in between. ...Jim Thompson

That sounds distinctly dodgy. Would most likely dither the picture as well :-)...

Regards,

Chris

Jim Thompson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

or he could build a Lexan plastic radome for the dish,and leave an incandscent light bulb on underneath it. Maybe a plastic trash can would suffice for a radome.

Some ideas.....

Cheers

just turn in on now and then when the snow gets too much, beats getting outside with a broom ;)

-Lasse

Put more work into the radome.

RL

I had heard a story about 'Vibrators' and early Laser printer fusers. Seemed to do the trick.

Cheers

Paint it black and hope the sun helps melt the snow?

Does that screw up the RF reflectivity?

George H.

From a vibrator to a broom, thats just sick!

We bought some vibrating sex toys, from the Good Vibrations store, to use on IC feeder tubes. They cost about $12, instead of the official feed tube vibrators that were $250 each. They worked, but the best feed tube vibrators eventually turned out to be AC-powered barber-supply units.

John

two things...

I had a friend that built on a garage on his house in the mountains. he did his own roofing, to make sure that the nail spacing was loose enough not to block his satellite signal when he mounted his dish INSIDE the roof!

Of course, the professional thing to do is to get a heated radome, made of fiberglass and very thin resistive network inside. Usually two networks, so if one fails, you have a little while to repair it...

Charlie

Well, your idea of mounting resistors to the dish is a good start..use those in the metal power package with mounting "ears" along with thermal grease. That thermal blanket could be as el-cheapo as a garbage bag over everything.. If you do not like that, then use that spray-on foam urethane (nominally yellow. There is a foam insulator variant that is white,but that may be water soluble even when set.

They have made commercial heaters for sat dishes since the '70s. A cheaper method was to use pipe tape heaters made to keep water pipes from freezing. They have thermostats to turn them off, at around 35-40 degrees F. How hard can it be to find the right item for the job, or are you only planning on melting a few spots?

Boston Strangler!

=:-O Rich