8ft satellite dish

[vawtman]

I know I said in a earlier post that solar collectors were boring, but was mowing my mother inlaws bush this morning and she wants to get rid of it.It has a tracking motor of some sort.Anybody toyed with these or should I use it melt space junk?

[hydrosun]

I've used the frame and motor as a base to mount solar panels and  tracking the sun. I used a circuit from redrok.com to control the motor and keep the panels pointed at the sun for an increased output. On the redrok.com site are lots of ideas and links for using these dishes to concentrate sunlight on heat transfer of energy.

Chris

[dinges]

No, it's not useable. Do the right thing & donate it to me.

Seriously. Such a thing has possibilites. The polarmount & motor could be used to track PV panels, if you can fit them on a frame and mount them together.

The parabolic antenna; could turn it into a solar concentrator. Or maybe sell to a local radio amateur as an antenna?

I'd definitely not let such an opportunity pass...

[vawtman]

Peter I guess the credit needs to go to Stonebrain for finding this.I mowed around it for 5 yrs and until his reply mentioned solar thinges, things clicked.Im sure ill figure a way to complicate things.Thanks

[electrondady1]

hey there vman, ive seen them used as the roof of a gazebo.  flip it  over and build your "generator  room " underneath  just run the shaft straight up through the "roof"

[henjulfox]

Gee, what can we do with a shaft sticking up in the air... Put a turbine on it.

-Henry

[Stonebrain]

Too much honor for me.

A collector for direct water heating might be a bit heavy for it,

but for a pv panel,you can maybe double the precious watthours/day.Have

to check this out though.

The fun thing about it is that it can fly to pieces in heavy wind

cheers,

stonebrain

[Volvo farmer]

I just built a pretty decent tracker with one. I hired the guy at the local trailer manufacturing place to weld up a frame. The thing is very strong but HEAVY. It took a the crane on the propane guys truck to get it onto the pole. I've got four BP 170s flying on it but haven't hooked up the tracker yet (need to eat more peanut butter sandwitches to empty the weather dome). If you look real close in the last picture you can see that this doesn't use a linear actuator. It has a type of worm drive on it. These dishes were made by Paraclipse and were the Cadillac of dish movers twenty years ago, very rugged and precise in their tracking.

Here's the article I wrote on the prototype

Tracker on the cheap

[vawtman]

(The fun thing about it is that it can fly apart in heavy wind).Hmmmm

Wouldnt the hose or wires get tangled and keep it from overspeeding.Givin ya crap.

I wonder if it was lined with black tubing and sealed with glass.You could probably make use of it.Vawts/solar is fun!

[asheets]

You could use the motor and tracker for something RE-related, but I would use the dish itself to snag wireless Internet from somebody (like from a Starbucks or McDonalds, or somebody else that has a wi-fi hot spot).

[veewee77]

Those may have been the Cadillac, but BirdView was the Benz. . . their tracker (the motorized part, anyway) were excellent.  I'll post pics of mine in my gallery later today. . .