On Apr 13, 2:08*am, Emanuele Colucci wrote:



Greetings,

Emanuele Colucci


W1GHZ has a website on amateur microwave stuff that might be useful
(construction practices, etc.)

If you have access to a university library or online equivalent, there
was a set of articles in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine
(not the transactions on A&P) a few years back covering design of
various reflector antennas.

The Cassegrain is popular for the reasons you give: low noise from
behind the antenna, especially if the secondary reflector is
underilluminated. And, it lets you put the electronics right at the
feed without having to worry about putting them out at the prime
focus.

You might also look at the Gregorian or Dragonian configurations,
which are offset feed schemes. The Allen Telescope Array is using a
form of Gregorian.

After that, it's mostly a matter of paper and pencil and working out
the curvatures. The biggest challenge is in figuring out what the
effect of your construction tolerances is.