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anoduck
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Update: I wanted to get back and write an update on the results, unforeseen complications, and unexpected success. Over the past two years, one of the two built bester antennas has sat atop my house in what has quickly grown to be an antenna array. The two biggest mistakes made were both fallacious assumptions: Assuming a brand-new, expensive amplifier would arrive free of defect from China. Assuming the satellite feed distance was already correctly configured. Both caused considerable delay and wasted many hours of troubleshooting the wrong part. I rightfully should not provide advice I would be unwilling to follow, but regardless, I suggest if you are not strapped for cash, pay the extra money for quality cable connectors. Avoid the crimp connectors if possible, in favor of tension connectors. Furthermore, for larger cables, such as Rg8, use Type N over SMA. SMA simply isn't strong enough to hold up to the forces placed on it with larger cabling. Little can be said about the experience regarding the defective amplifier, besides echoing the golden rule of the importance to test even new equipment after purchase. To bore you with the trivial, parabolic reflectors are highly engineered complex devices with a wide range of variance. Every dimension of the reflector, feed arm, and receiver was engineered to the effect of providing a functioning unit to collect a signal and focus that signal on one specific location. If your configuration of the reflector is haphazard, and therefore incorrect, you will not receive any signal. All of this is said to stress the importance of recognizing exactly what type of reflector you are using, and to ensure you know how to configure it. Just by sheer sight alone, the distance from the receiver to the distance became suspect, as the receiver appeared to be so far from the dish it was not receiving any benefit from the parabolic reflection. Research began, and luckily a parabolic calculating program was discovered. The program had one drawback, it was written to only calculate center feed and vertically ovular offset parabolic reflectors, while ours was an oblong offset reflector. Oblong offset reflectors are wider than they are tall, because usually they use two offset receivers. Thankfully, the Northern Texas Microwave Society published a PowerPoint presentation on how to correctly measure the dimensions of your oblong offset reflector in order to provide the correct measurements to calculate your parabolic reflector dimensions as an ovular offset dish. Which basically involved laying the dish level and filling it up with water, and then measuring the diameter of the pool. Needless to say, this provided us with several concrete answers as to how we were supposed to have our reflector setup. Without an amplifier and working off the sheer brilliance of the bester antenna, we were able to pick up a signal located behind a hill through a heavily wooded area over 321 yds away at around 58dbs. Which is an incredibly surprising and unexpected success. We have two new builds to work on, a small omnidirectional antenna for a ESP32 device and a semi directional paneled antenna. We also would like to further improve on the performance of our cantenna build. I hope that this update provides information someone else might find of use someday.
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I ran up on this and was pretty impressed. Don't know if anyone has tried to build one of their own. It is a fascinating design, and I am interested in how the internal baffles interact with the wave. img.asp
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@eco32 I do appreciate the generosity of the assist. I stumbled upon an article explaining how to make your own inclinometer and a laser to basically do the same thing. As probably figured out by now, the answer was on the slide I had posted earlier. Offset angle is the same thing as tilt. So for my older HughesNet offset dish the answer was 16.6 degrees. My second build was much more precise than the first build, but performance is about the same. I mounted the first build to a used Directv dish and the second to my hughesnet dish. Both have been relocated to the roof of my house, and will probably build a bester for 5GHZ to add to the Hughesnet dish as well. Location is probably the biggest problem I have with the setup. The trees are very thick, and then there is this gigantic hill that blocks the line of sight to the target area. I am working on building a passive repeater to overcome the hill, and shopping for a deal on an amplifier with some serious wattage. Good quality amplifiers are damn expensive, which really sucks.
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@AdminThis does not answer the question though, it only answers the obvious first part. Which was, what angle does the dish need to be set to? I apologize, I didn't take calculus in college. So I wouldn't know where to begin to formulate a function to find the angle. Regardless, I am starting another build of the bester. Iust have buggered up the first build.
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@Admin is of course correct. There was never a question about it, the guy knows his stuff. Which is why I am here, to proverbially drink from the fountain of his knowledge. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @Admin 1. So, is 26.5 straightforward? 2. Is this angle universal for all dishes? ----------------------------------------------------------------- @eco32 Just restating to make sure I understand this correctly. If I hold a lazer where the bester is, the lazer should hit the dish, and reflect off the dish. Then a piece of paper can be used to show where the beam of the lazer is reflected to?
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So, I am guessing 26.5 is straight forward? It looks correct.
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I thought I had made a post that explained I re-inverted the dish. Firefox must have crashed then. OK, I will try setting it to that angle. These are the specs for my specific antenna.
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References for aligning dish angle and calculating the offset. For prosperity. http://k5tra.net/Graphics/10 GHz/Offset feed dish calculations.pdf https://www.satsig.net/22-deg-offset-dish.htm
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Just ran another scan for comparison, and I am receiving better connectivity with the standard rubber coated antenna than the bester. So something is definitely off. Looks like I am off to troubleshoot..
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I just finished the build no less than thirty minutes ago, the antenna is hooked up, and the first scan has just ran. Admittedly, the results are not as good as I had hoped, so I am troubleshooting the setup to see what, if anything, went wrong. I am getting just about the same result from the bester and satellite dish as I was from the cantenna I built and used indoors. These are the potential issues I am looking at. 1. Bad coax cable 2. unaligned reciever (bester antenna) 3. unaligned dish 4. faulty soldered bulkhead. 5. Bent element.
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The entire configuration will be made of steel, because the aluminum disks didn't turn out too well. I just finished cutting the baseplate with a cut off disk and an angle grinder. ----- Just for reference purposes, I ran across this article: Hackaday: Soldering Aluminum. It describes a method of scouring aluminum using mineral oil and an abrasive in order to prevent oxidation build up.
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Is this better than adding a horn? I know stupid question.
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I never quite understood how tiny this antenna is until now.
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I will be using steel for the baseplate. Regardless, you may not be able to solder aluminum, but you can braze it if you have the correct flux mixture. I have done this before, creating a transfer port for an air rifle. You just have to get it really, really hot. Although creating a jig to hold the copper wire for the bulkhead squarely to the baseplate would be a headache I do not wish for,
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You are correct by this. Antennas are made of numerous materials, it matters little. I prefer working with aluminum, as it is extremely easy to shape by hand, but had concerns it was too soft, and would get bent to hell and back if dropped. This alone is why I was considering copper, because it is still pretty malleable by hand, but is harder than aluminum. SMA bulkhead arrived yesterday, hoping to get time for the build this weekend.