Sat-Benelux

Hello Feedhunters!

I thought I'd share my progress with you in developing a homemade satellite dish....

I've started by trying to make a copy of my 65cm FortecStar dish, using tin foil (aluminium foil) and varnish... at least in phase 1!

Here's some pictures of the development - I will post later on how well this foil cover/foil dish compares to the "normal" 65cm dish.

2 sheets of foil and some varnish:



A picture of the dish, with the camera looking through the LNB holder



A side-shot of the dish, showing the reflection of the LNB arm



Ionising hair dryer to help dry the varnish



A new coat of "fast drying" varnish

So I got desperate to try the foil covered dish for power/reflectivity....but due to bad weather, this had to be done from indoors, through a double-glazed window:



I tried the 65cm dish with and without the foil, which produced the same maximum signal..... 54% (but this was behind a closed double-glazed window!):



It seems that two layers of foil with varnish in between is not strong enough to maintain the precise parabolic shape when I took it off the steel dish.

Next step.... fibreglass over the foil!

It was a slightly sunny day here in south-eastern England today so while the foil was on the dish, I tested the heating power of the solar oven!

Step 1 was to dry the washing:


But that wasn't good enough, I wanted to know how hot things were getting at the focus.... so the handy (but probably inaccurate) fridge thermometer was used:


It was originally showing a temperature of 17 C in the kitchen.. but what about at the place where the LNB should be?

Health warning: if you try this, wear sunglasses as things get very bright, and do not put your head in the way of the reflected light!



And after 1 minute, the maxiumum reading had been reached, 50 C:


But then this probably was a terrible way of measuring the temperature/power of the dish, so I thought it would be a more traditional test to try and make a cup of tea using the energy!




By this point, the thermometer was no longer capable of measuring temperature... this was cold water from the tap that was reading 20 C... who cares anyway, can it make a cup of tea????

I picked the darkest mug I could to get the most energy absorbed and put cling film over the top to enclose any heat...




All was going well until the clouds came back :-/ So I'll have to get my tea from the kettle for now...but the water had heated up, but probably in the region of 5-10C in 40minutes... if only we had sunshine!