Cute dishes on campus

[toucan-man]

Photo by Jeff Miller/UW-Madison​

I have for a while admired a beautiful array of dishes on a certain building in Madison, Wisconsin, but never knew what they were. The block the building is on is bordered by Charter Street, so Charter was one stray guess, but something said that can't be right.

It's actually this facility,

http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/media/april2010.html

On that page I read,

This antenna will serve as a back-up to either of our other two C-Band antennas: the 7.3 meter “West Dish,” now looking at the AMC2 communications satellite to receive data relayed from MTSAT-1R, POES (Gilmore Relay), and NOAAport; and the 11 meter “Orchard Street Dish,” now pointed to the AMC3 communications satellite to receive data relayed from MSG Meteosat-9 and POES (Wallops Relay).

Those are great C-band dishes, wish one was in my backyard, but do you think they are a bit of overkill for receiving AMC2 and AMC3? I guess if price is no object...

Some photos and video of the Patriot dish installation:

SSEC

 

[truckracer]

overkill on our terms but they probably want the most signal reliability.

 

[cracklincrotch]

I was just scrolling down to admire the photo and all my wife had to say was "No."