Can I Build My Own Deep Space Antenna Network for Receiving Planetary Probes?

[king yasin ally]

I am trying to build my own communication / listening dish, multi frequency antenna, basically my own deep space antenna network. how to get the needed supply for such endeavour? help with any info on this,
a new field for me.

thanks!

 

[berkeman]

I am trying to build my own communication / listening dish, multi frequency antenna, basically my own deep space antenna network. how to get the needed supply for such endeavour? help with any info on this,
a new field for me.

thanks!

What antennas have you built so far? How large do you want to build this dish? What are you going to use for your LNA and receiver stages? How will you be analyzing the data? Will this dish be movable, or will it be anchored to the ground?

 

[king yasin ally]

What antennas have you built so far? How large do you want to build this dish? What are you going to use for your LNA and receiver stages? How will you be analyzing the data? Will this dish be movable, or will it be anchored to the ground?

I have not build any antenna before, this would be my first run, I will like the antenna to be flexible and large in deployment , (fabric like material),
I also have not thought much on the subsequent devices (amplifier or receiver), when it come to the data i got a decent machine (a Mac cluster) that i generally
use for simulation / modelling.

Ground! with a rotating arm structure.

 

[russ_watters]

How big?

 

[king yasin ally]

3 m to 6meter

 

[scanvas]

3m to 6m - I wish I had that opportunities... but try to contact other HAM Radio Astronomers

This guy received Voyager 2006 with his 5,6m Dish 3xfar as Pluto
http://www.qsl.net/ct1dmk/dsn.html

For deeper space communication You´ll need something like this:

its an old but excellent introduction in the materia

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/radioastronomy/radioastronomy_all.pdf

good luck

 

[davenn]

I am trying to build my own communication / listening dish, multi frequency antenna, basically my own deep space antenna network. how to get the needed supply for such endeavour? help with any info on this,
a new field for me

from your opening comments etc, I and the others are under the impression that you want to receive the planetary probes that are out there

Galileo, Cassini, the Mars orbiters etc
They all operate in the 8 GHz band

There's a good yahoo group ( I have been a member for quite some years) ... Amateur Deep Space Network that have a bunch of guys
around the world ( many are amateur radio operators) that build systems and receive signals from the various spacecraft out there

I would suggest it would be a good place to start by joining up and asking a few questions
you have a lot of hard work ahead of you with getting a suitable dish, getting it mounted on a steerable system and then all the low noise receiver gear

I hope your electronics and mechanical skills are very good cheers
Dave