Re: DIY WiFi antenna from Satellite dish
One point to remember in aiming your creation: the dishes with offset feed points used for Dish and DirecTV reflect waves at equal angles like a mirror reflects a flashlight. For example, if the dish is mounted so the reflector is vertical, and the pick-up is mounted about 20° below horizontal, the dish's beam will be focused about 20° above the horizon. If you do not allow for this, you might point the beam up over the WiFi hot spot instead of at it. With a standard angle for the pick-up support arm, a properly aimed dish will be tipped somewhat toward the ground to bring the beam down toward the hot spot antenna. In the 20° example, the dish would be tipped down 20° with the feed down 40° to create a horizontal beam. Alternately, mount it upside-down so the pickup is above the dish, use the same upward angles to make the beam leave the dish horizontally. In the same example, the feed would look down 40° into a dish tipped up 20° to make a horizontal beam.
Other types of dishes with the pick-up directly in front of the center of the dish with zero degrees offset must be aimed so that the dish reflector points directly toward the signal location, like the old 10-foot satellite dishes of the last century. The small TV dishes can be aimed by adjusting either the feeds or the reflector.
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Someone said "Making good decisions comes from experience, experience comes from bad decisions." I say there are three kinds of people: those who learn from their mistakes, those who learn from the mistakes of others, and those who never learn.
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