What are you expecting for birds? Condors?? The old TVRO dishes were for
2-4 ghz I think. If you used it for 10 ghz work it would have
incredible gain. The surface would have to be extremely smooth as even
minor imperfections woulg be bad for 10 ghz use. I saw an article that a
group used a 10' 1nd a 12' dish to go 125 miles over the desert with
802.11b wireless (wireless computer network if you're not a computer
person like myself). I have a smaller 4'x6' dish I want to mount on my
tower someday so I can screw around on the microwave bands. I live on a
mountaintop in Vermont which makes it easier to get out on the upper
bands that way. Have fun with it and don't stop dreaming of the
possibilities. 73's de KA1LHZ

Dave Typinski wrote:
Anyone have any ideas about what one might do with a television
receive-only (TVRO) antenna? The thing is 10' diameter and it's mine
for the price of dismantling it and hauling it out of the present
owner's back yard.

I'm thinking radio astronomy. Might be nice to make my own radio map
of the galaxy. I'm guessing that this would work okay somewhere
between 1 and 10 GHz... which means making a feed horn... which is
easy enough to do.

What else could I do with this antenna? Other than covering it in
polyethylene sheet to make a really big bird bath...