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. Currently I'm building a 4.8M dish for EME, I'm also active on 70cm EME with 4x23 element Yagi system.

I build the 5 and 8 meter dishes 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 in operation in Sweden at SM7GVF: SM7GVF Dish

The following pictures shows some of the steps during the building process of the 8 meter dish