I finally got around to hooking my 10 GHz transverter up to a dish.
This is a 90cm TV satellite dish, which was relatively inexpensive and easy to ship. I was looking for a 1.2m dish, but they are difficult to ship, and not worth it for me at this stage.
I’m using a survey tripod with a large Gitzo 3-way head (which I picked up a few months ago in Tokyo for cheap). The dish is mounted via a cut-down roof mount pole, to a piece of wood, as quick and dirty way to get the system together for evaluation. It’s not sturdy or accurate enough for serious use.
The transverter is locked to GPS via a Leo Bodnar mini-GPS frequency reference, powered here by a phone power bank via a USB cable. At some point I’ll add a 5V bus to the transverter.
I’m running 200 mW barefoot out of the transverter, with a dish gain of about 40 dBi, producing an EIRP in the order of 1KW.
The next step with this is to set up my beacon at home, then drive around seeing where and how far away I can pick it up with this dish setup. Or maybe even talk to someone.