As I pulled into the driveway after work today, I noticed one of the neighbours had placed a couple of satellite dishes by the curb for disposal. First thing to cross my mind was "Hmm, I wonder if I could do something with those...". Mentioned it to Connie and she said "Grab them" so I did.
They also came with a mess of coax (probably 75 Ω stuff) that's probably been sitting outside for who knows how long, so could be of questionable quality by now. It will give me something to start off working with though.
Not entirely sure what I'll do with them yet. I've read in various places on the web about people using them for various simple science experiments/demonstrations, like recording solar radio emissions. It will probably take me a while to even do anything with them. I'll have to spend some time researching different options and finding out what other people have done with them.
scottn4jn
The coax will probably be 75 ohm RG-6 quad-shield. It will be very low-loss given the frequencies on which DBS operates. If it's in good shape, it might be worth hanging onto. As for new jobs for the laid-off dishes - Broadband Hamnet (high-speed amateur networking in our chunk of 2.4 GHz spectrum) is an up-and-coming mesh network technology that repurposes old routers and such for ham use. Their site is: http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/ There were no specific mentions on the site of recycling DBS dishes but that doesn't mean people aren't working on it. I'm sure there are numerous other ham, astronomical and other applications out there. I just thought I'd put one idea onto the table for consideration. Keep us posted as to what you decide to do with them. Cheers and 73 - Scott - N4JN