[NLRS] Hughes net hardware applications

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

As part of my new house, there's a Hughes net dish and modem thrown in.
I see by googling that the modem is just considered obsolete and so has
little value. And that I get along better with my Verizon wireless
broadband than many Hughes net users get along with Hughes net. Further
digging indicates that this .74 meter dish uplinks with 1 watt (home
use) at about 14.5 GHz and down at 11.5 to 12.7 GHz with a 1 dB NF or
better. Has anyone used parts of these at 10 GHz, like the RF stages on
from the LNB and the up converter?

I know the larger dish gets a bit tougher to handle, but I can see a use
for it in a fixed position for an experiment. Beginning about 4 miles to
my east there is a new wind farm several miles wide and about 4 miles
north to south. If I could get a beacon (maybe on several bands) on a
country elevator the other side of the wind farm and high enough that
the direct path is through several turbine rotors when they are facing
east or west, it would be a good test of propagation through such a wind
farm. There doesn't seem to be much reported of tests. I'd expect to see
some flutter or QSB when the blades were cutting the direct path. And
I'd expect to see some scatter off the direct path reflections from
blades and towers. QSB when the blades were turning, and not QSB from
the towers. These off the path signals would be more pronounced if the
beacon was not directional. With a gaggle of towers even without blades
turning there ought to be many manifestations of multipath. The big
question is how much signal variation would there be, 10 dB or 40 dB or
2 dB? I'm thinking more like 8 to 10 as my guess on the direct path.
Enough to be noticed, but not enough to prevent communications except in
the weakest of signal conditions.

And now back to stevedoring the move.

73, Jerry, K0CQ