Risky, 24 hour radio telescope

    I am about to make a risk move, writing about a seeming unrelated topic. First, a photo...

The Mighty 'Salad Bowl'...

    So I present my (actually 'our', it was a team project) latest eye candy. It is supposed to be a radio telescope, in the final build our physicist team mate calculated it had a resolution of ~1° (depressingly the moon is 0.5° big when you look at it), and due to the antenna used it can see radio waves remarkable similar to TV signals...

    Before I continue I will point out that this was group project for a 24 hour competition a while ago. I am posting now as it is incredibly likely that the dish will actually be used in the next couple of weeks (I'll get to that).

   The project split very nicely down into several sections, I am going to focus on the actual physical dish as I think this ascpect is going to bleed into terrain building.

Humble beginnings, some handy calculation sheets too.

Parabolas and other design diagrams

    Our aim was to make a reflective surface that would bounce as much incoming light as possible onto the antenna, the simplest option, and hence our chosen one, is to use a paraboloid (a 3D parabola) and place the antenna receiver at the focus. Given we only had 24 hours to produce a rather large something to a fairly fine tolerance the dish team, Mr Physicist and I, opted for cardboard as the main structural material, primarily originating as pizza boxes (we're students...). This allowed us to cut out all our shapes quickly and precisely, and also bonded well with our adhesive of choice, hot glue.

The dish after 6 hours, and finished to the original design

    I was absolutely astounded by how effectively the plan worked, not only did we complete the originally planned dish structure within 6 hours, we were then able to more than double the diameter of the dish and the structure itself has survived for another 3 months with comparatively little damage.

The dish after 12 hours!

    Cardboard is not particularly effective at reflecting radio waves so we then had to add a aluminium foil surface to the dish, then it was a clear run to the end with a simple pivot to allow us to point it at things. Of course as Mr Physicist and I had been playing with our craft project, the rest of the team had been throwing to together various devices and software to read the signal being picked up by our receiver (which was just a satellite TV receiver).

   Having put it together, the weather proved to be our greatest challenge - with wind tearing at the foil and clouds stopping us from seeing where the sun (a nice initial target) was. With the end of the academic year and nicer weather coming up we will probably finish this project off very shortly...

   From a wargamer's perspective, the project was eye opening. We were able to design, build and finish a complicated object in less than a day, all the while knowing how big each component was to less than 1% of its size. Not only this but the end product has proven to be durable to an extent, and most of the construction material was effectively free. Contrast this with my previous experience building terrain from polystyrene or even foamcore where your knife seems to do funny dances and the end product is slightly squishy, and I think I can see how my future 'man-made' terrain will be put together.

    What next? Possibly a nice post detailing the dish being pointed at something, or maybe a suspicious smelling 15mm building...

Inspiration everywhere...