Primestar dish

[KD5LPB]

Has anybody out there read QST this month? In it, it says that you can use a primestar dish for the amateur bands, but does not include directions, could anybody help me??? my e-mail is rosswardrup@hotmail.com

[KB9UMT]

I dont think Jim would mind me fowarding this to you as he answered you question here but was on another forum...so here is his answer good luck de KB9UMT Don

I have a primestar dish also, and have thought about using it for something other than a useless house ornament. The primestar dish was designed for the Ku band, I have read that they could be used up to 10ghz. Just recently I found a page at the San Bernardino Microwave Society site that mentions one of it's members designing a chapperal feed for 24ghz on the primestar dish. The url is: http://www.ham-radio.com/sbms/newsletters/1999nwsltrs/jan99.html
As far as the receiver and LNB is concerned, I doubt that they would be of much use. Hope this helps and let me know if you come up with something good.

73 de KD4ZGA Jim

[N3ASE]

If you are at all interested in working AO-40, I
have successfully modified a Primestar dish to work
at 2.4GHz. The only components changed were the
antenna and downconverter at the feedhorn.
I'm currently using a 3 1/2 turn helix feed into a
modified Drake 2880. I haven't had much time to work
with it, but the results have been extremely
gratifying. They're really worth keeping if you have
any interests in satellite operation.