Finding Decommissioned Parabolic Comm Dishes - Pacific Northwest
I have a project where I would like to track down a pair of decommissioned communication parabolic dishes. I a in the Seattle area, but would be will to drive some ways. Has anyone has any luck just calling the communications contractors? I've been searching cragslist, ebay, ham classifieds, etc for local sources. I'm looking for a simple round prime focus dish rather than the widely available oval TV satellite dishes to make feed horn design easier. I also want matching dishes to make mounting identical so I don't have to solve the same problem twice.
Prefer 4 foot (1.2 meters) for transport, but might consider 6 footers if anyone thinks I can haul them on a Subaru WIlderness Outback with factory rails? These will be in a noisy environment so I want solid dishes to keep the back lobes down. Any advice on f/D (relative depth of the dish)? Sat dishes are relatively flat, but comm dishes are often deep at f/D 0.3 or so. I assume that I am facing the same problems as the backhaul microwave comm folks, but a short focal distance seems to imply a splash plate rather than a simple horn to handle 120 degree feed? What's a fair price to pay?
Appreciate any advice -73s