[BC] Re: Sat dishes vs snow

[Dennis Cope]

<snip>

The power bill is no problem, the power feeds to the antennas are overkill
big time.

So power is no problem. At the staff meeting coming up I will bring up your
idea and see if we can budget the project..

Dennis
WESR, WCTG, NOAA


I don't know if any of these solutions other than a surface treatment that
would help a 60' dish (sorry, Dennis).  That would be a really *big* cover
that would lead to its own support requirements...

BTW, I know of one uplink site that uses heaters/deicers on their large
uplink
dishes (e.g. ones that are 9m, 15m etc.).  They have to -- they are located
in the Chicago area.  From what they mentioned, the electricity to run the
deicers each season is not insignificant...  Essentially (IIRC) they had to
run separate power trunks from their main feedlines to provide enough juice
to heat up the dishes sufficiently.

For the curious, they use rear-heating.  A cavity is formed behind the
reflector surface with an essentially duplicate dish-shaped surface that is
spaced away from the front reflector.  Then, hot air blowers pump air into
and around that cavity continously when the system is on.  That system takes
quite a lot of electricity to run to maintain the amount of hot air required
to keep the front reflector surface warm enough when it's below freezing (or
frankly, below zero in some cases).

--
Sherrod Munday <smunday at srnradio.com>
Technical Director
Salem Radio Network    (972) 831-1920

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