Brian GM4DIJ on East Lomond Hill in Fife for the UHF/SHF contest about 1996.
Brian Howie GM4DIJ built and operated portable 3cm equipment in the 1970s using Cassegrain parabolic dishes which had been scrapped by Ferranti from their Blue Parrot radar system, developed in Edinburgh. He started with wideband gear using Gunn diodes and klystrons.
Brian writes: the Cassegrain configuration is quite clever. The dish consists of an array of wires at 45 deg, and the secondary reflector, horizontal wires. Horizontally polarised incoming signals pass through the secondary reflector but are rotated to vertical polarisation by the dish and then can be reflected by the secondary reflector onto the horn feed. This largely removes the aperture loss caused by the reflector. That’s why on my dish, the polarisation of the waveguide is vertical.
Also on East Lomond about 1996.
Set-up on Soutra Hill, just south of Edinburgh, about 2012 for contact with Brian GM8BJF at Cairn o’Mount.
Also on Soutra Hill about 2012.
The Ferranti Blue Parrot radar system from which the Cassegrain dishes were derived.
Blue Parrot nosecone on Buccaneer aircraft, mounted under a fibreglass nose..