6 Foot expansion panels possible?

[Cband55]

I just installed my 11th dish and wonder, could it be possible just to soldier on expansion sheet metal to a 6 foot dish or am I watching too much Lepou on Chop Shop London Garage

I wanted an 8 foot dish but the shpiping was just too much, more even than the cost of the dish.

my eleven dishes yes they need multipe LNB brackets to get more sats I just order them

 

[Long Hair]

If your good with Math, than I don't see why not.

 

[dashaund]

First off congrats on the new dish. Looks like you have a fine collection growing there :up

As far as adding extension panels, I remember reading a thread here where this was discussed previously. Thanks to Google, I found it: http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/107745-fortec-fs6d-1-8m-dish.html#post1039044

Pretty much, you have to remember a satellite dish has to be a perfect parabola to work properly, so the extensions would have to continue the curvature of the existing parabola and then be fabricated perfectly. Can it be done? I don't see why not. But it seems like it'd take computer modeling and highly accurate machinery to fabricate such extensions. I'd love to see someone attempt this via hombrew materials and report their success.

 

[Cold Winter]

Makes you wonder why ( e.g. Fortec ) doesn't do it.

A 3 foot steel dish with bolt holes on the side rim can be sold as is. Or they can ship with a number ( e.g. 6 ) of 3 foot steel bolt on petals to get you to 9 feet! Another set of 3 foot petals ( around 9 of them ) would get you a 15 foot dish.

Thats all of three separate stamping dyes. Knowing them price could be under $1K.

Yeah, we can dream I suppose...

 

[primestar31]

Don't forget, if you do this, then you have to place the lnb farther out to gain better illumination of the now larger dish. If not, it won't "see" any more dish, then it originally did. So, you'd gain nothing, except for possibly cutting down on terrestrial noise by now having a "deeper" dish.

 

[guapoharry]

This does not compute for me. If you have to place the LNB farther out, wouldn't that mean the focus changed?

 

[Anole]

"does not compute"

See my comment in this thread , about cutting down a 10' or 8' dish to make a 6'er.

I believe if you think about it, you'll see that the same applies in reverse for making a small dish into a big one.

 

[Cold Winter]

This does not compute for me. If you have to place the LNB farther out, wouldn't that mean the focus changed?

No. A parabola, regardless of diameter will have a given focal length.

But if you started with a 3 footer, hung on panels to get to 9' and then went to 15', more than likely, just to get good illumination ( and a reasonably flat wave front ) the focal length of the 3 footer would be a good 10" in front of it. An odd arrangement, but can be done.

Of course, you don't have to make a full parabola, or even a contiguous dish. This could be a "banana peel", or simply 3 - 4 petals hung out away from the central dish ( either right on the rim or 3 feet away on a frame ).

One other option is to take more than one "pie plate" and mount them on a suitable frame with a common focus ( pie plates with a longer FL would naturally be better ).

Options...:tux:

 

[guapoharry]

With respect to the technical discussion paragraph -- Agreed, Anole.

...A parabola, regardless of diameter will have a given focal length.
...

Stated in another way, that's what I was trying to get at...

So if you replace "lnb" in primestar's comment with "scalar", that makes sense to me.

 

[dashaund]

All good points. Eh, me personally, I rather spend the time I would invest into making my dish bigger, into looking around for another bigger dish And then I'd have two dishes.