Bob, KA1GT discovered a Chinese solar cooker for under $100 USD delivered, that shows promise as a 1.5M dish for moonbounce on microwave bands from 23cm on up. His preliminary testing is encouraging - the dish seems to have an excellent parabolic profile.
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| Boil water or send RF to the moon, your choice. |
For the price I decided to jump in and join the fun. Amazon delivered the dish to my door in three days. It arrived in a 3 foot by 3 foot (1M x 1M) box, and weighted about 35 pounds (16 Kg). During assembly I shot a bunch of pictures that hopefully anyone else going down this path will find useful.
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| Some assembly definitely required. |
While the supplied directions are pretty obscure and written in Sino-English, piecing the dish together isn't hard at all. The six panels bolt together quite easily, and the steel ring sits in six brackets that are attached to the ribs. The ring stiffens the dish and provides a place to attach a mount. Creating a mount will be one of the two main challenges of this project. A septum feed that illuminates the dish well is the other..
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| You can see three of the gold brackets the ring will attach to. |
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| Detail -Bracket used to mount the support ring. |
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| The ring support brackets mount on the third hole from the center. |
I think I've met the mount challenge. The dish will mate to my slew drive via a 2 inch aluminum pipe. I attached two boards to the steel ring on the back of the dish, and I'll use an aluminum plate as a cross piece with the 2 inch tube welded in place. Until UPS shows up with parts I'm at a stand-still. I did discover that 1 inch thick by 4 inch wide boards just clear the rib seams and lay flat.
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| Waiting on an aluminum plate to bridge across the two wood pieces. |
While I left the Mylar tape on the front of the dish to protect the surface during assembly, as soon as the dish sees sunlight that Mylar will get peeled off. It's just too much of a burn hazard at the focal point to leave it in place.