Re: [amsat-bb] TVRO dish and AO-40

["Frederick M. Spinner" <fspinner@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

You know, we should beat up the ARRL for saying this.  A ten foot dish at 4 
GHz (TVRO) has about a 2 degree 3 dB beamwidth, and many people have gotten 
this to work.  So at about 7 degrees or so at 2400, using standatd tvro 
equipment it shouldn't be THAT hard to peak the dish at AO-40.  True TV sats 
are geostationary.  But for that matter at apogee AO-40 doesn't move very 
fast either.

It might be difficult for a beginner, but I'd bet anyone $50 that as long as 
the sat was on and at a receivable attitude, I could get a TVRO dish to 
track it.

Having said that-- if you are technical enough to understand both AO-40 
tracking and TVRO equipment I see no reason that it cannot be done.

Underilluminating the dish to get gain down a bit is another possibility.  I 
think that article did a disservice to the AO-40 community by discouraging 
people to try it.

Another person who's done the BUD on AO-40 is W0LMD 
(http://www.ultimatecharger.com/dish.html)

I'm going to try it if I ever get to build my house in the country and move 
there.  (I'm the the city, and the covenants s*ck..)  I have two dishes in 
storage an 8' and a 10' Orbitron.  I also have a 4' dish in case it doesn't 
work.  Covenants say I can't use any of these at my present QTH.

Fred W0FMS

> > ..."The Doctor is in" (page 51) about using a 10
> > foot satellite dishes for AO-40. The advice given is that this isn't a
> > good idea due to the difficulty of positioning the dish accurately
> > enough with it's narrow beam width.
>
> >     Should I abandon the idea of using the 12 footer for AO-40 and
> > continue with my 90 cm dish? (The big dish will definately go up for
> > TV anyways) Anyone else using their C band dish for AO-40? (Besides
> > Bob, who offers photographic evidence- heh)
>
>Don't take my word for it yet.

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