Carsten Groen's (OZ9AAR) personal place

SHF EME antennas

I have been active on 1.3 GHz EME from two different systems. First from a 5 meter homemade dish and later from a 8 M homemade dish.

I build both dishes by myself, cutting aluminum tubing and plates in endless amounts, 1000's of pop rivets where used. Both dishes where daunting tasks, but somehow I managed to build both of them. The 5 meter dish took me around 2 months to construct, the 8 meter around 5 months in total.

For both the 5M and 8M dish, I had help when the they were mounted on the towers (a crane operator and a friend as a helper).

In 2000, I designed and build a 8 meter dish for EME use. The dish was operational until 2003, were I kind of lost interest in the Ham Radio hobby but still kept my call sign though, you never know (I got back in Ham radio in 2022 :)

During that time I was only active on 1.3 GHz, but the 8M dish was also used as a ground station to help the students from Aalborg University make contact with their first satellite (www.cubesat.aau.dk)!

The tower that supported the dish rotated around a solid steel post, 100 mm in diameter, 150 cm high. The tower turned 300 degrees on wheels that drove on a 2 meter (in diameter) solid bar, made of 30 x 50 mm steel. Azimuth drive was electrical, Elevation was hydraulic. Everything was computer controlled and could automatically follow the moon, sun and satellites.

The dish is now being put into operation in Sweden at SM7GVF: SM7GVF Dish

The following pictures shows some of the steps during the building process of the dish