[WSWSS] Need tips/tricks/info on old MilDish

[Bruce - KB6LWN]

Greetings,

I've saved what I think is an old Navy (due to color)
communication parabola from certain scrapping.

This thing is "H"EAVY!  And I'm figuring it's going to
need some 'serious' mounting fabrication.  Does anyone
have any experience installing this type of hardware ?
It's sectioned into quarters, and uses steel angle iron
and welded tubing for the frame, and then has about a
1/2" mesh of 1/8" steel wire woven into a mesh cover
and tack welded to the frame (complete with what I
think may be a couple 50 cal bullet holes in it).

I'm considering pulling the mesh off and recovering
it with solid sheetmetal just to get better performance
at the higher freqs.  Had originally thought about using
this to replace the 10' alum mesh BUD that the Oak tree
took down in February, but the more I look at this latest
treasure - the more I think I'll put it to Amateur use.
(got a TS-418C/U and an HP-614A along with the dish, so I
now have a signal generator for the UHF and above spectrum
for experimenting purposes.  my 1st venture into that area)

What would be ideal, would be a set of plans or at minimum
an 'exploded' view of a mount that would support this dish.
Also, feedhorn and dish articulation (steering) diagrams
would be very interesting...  I'm pretty sure my H-Tracker
actuator isn't going to handle this monster very well :-/
(I do have a small arc welder available)


PS: I'm thinking that a 1/2" mesh is probably not going to
work very well much past the 1.2gHz band, even less in the
C-Band (3.7-4.2ghz), and not at all at the higher Ku freqs.
I'm thinking something in the area of 900 MHz would be a
good place to start (with the mesh retained), and maybe go
up from there when/if the solid covering is installed.

The Dish is 10' diameter and apx 2.5-3' depth.

Thoughts ?

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