Who Needs a Satellite Dish When You Have a Wok?

An anonymous reader writes "Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective? This is exactly how North Otago's newest television station 45 South is transmitting its signal from its studio to the top of Cape Wanbrow, in a bid to keep costs down."

Focus

[rossdee]

Is a wok parabolic in cross section or is it circular?

The Easy Part

[Detritus]

The dish is the easy part. I'd like to know what he used for the feed assembly.

In the past, people have also used those circular snow sleds as the basis for building a dish antenna.

Re:MacGyver would be proud.

[mpe]

Can you somehow add a ball point pen and chewing gum into making the dish?

Ironically last night on Discovery was a programme which explained how Aldrin had to fix a broken switch in the LEM using a pen whilst Armstrong flew the craft.

Re:So basically they made a loss?

[Smidge204]

The article clearly states that they were volunteers, so there is a good chance they did it on their own time.

I wouldn't think the wok/dish is not the expensive part, the transceiver is. Unless the $80 for the "small dish" doesn't include the cost of the electronics I'm not sure how much was actually saved in that respect. Kudos regardless!

The article mentions that there's a how-to on the 'net somewhere. Anyone got a link? It should be added to the summary...
=Smidge=

Re:I sure hope they bought rust protection...

[ajs318]

The non-stick coating (so good, it won't even stick to the pan) would do the rust-protection thing. Although, you can get away with a few pinholes in a dish ..... just as a speck of dirt on a lens won't block out as much of the image as you might expect. Sky TV dishes are perforated to save weight and minimise wind effects.

Re your sig: Everyone in Britain (and France, too) learns to drive in a manual car.

Late '80's C-Band

[rohar]

I used to install C band residential satellite dishes and we used a radar detector mounted in the front of a wok to measure microwave interference from ground towers when evaluating customer installation locatations.

I use a spider-skimmer

[Two9A]

I've got a wireless link (11g) set up between two Linksys routers. At one end, I've put a spider skimmer behind the antenna; it's one of those Chinese cooking tools used to pick items out of a deep fryer. Near-perfect parabola, wire mesh of 6-8mm, bamboo handle; ideal reflective surface for a 2.4GHz signal.

I get about +12dB gain with the "dish" installed; not bad for £5.

Ingenious Kiwis

[AlHunt]

A friend of mine is from New Zealand. They are fiercely independent and patriotic people, much like Mr. Chekov in Star Trek (everything was done first or better in Soviet Union, remember?). Well, the Kiwi's may even have a valid claim on the first Powered Flight [monash.edu.au]. Though Mr. Pearce never claimed to have flown first because he didn't achieve a controlled landing.

Who needs a wok when there is a sattelite dish?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Among the many solar cooking devices shown in that site [solarcooking.org] are a few solar cookers made from discarded sattelite dish antennae [backyardnature.net]!!!!!

It's been done before...

[qazsedcft]

I saw guy on TV the other day who visited the Amazonian jungle, and he said that this is more or less how the local people there watch the World Cup.