Yesterday I mounted the VE4MA with squeezed-tube depolarizer made by M0EYT (uhf-satcom) on the 3.5m dish using a bracket designed and fabricated by KC2TDS. The tube holder is 3D-printed nylon, while the bracket itself is aluminum cut with water jet.
It got late by the time I finished mounting the feed, so I didn’t have time to optimize the position of the feed and super Kumar ring relative to the focal point. Nevertheless, measured 11dB of Sun noise vs. cold sky.
This morning, before Mars would set, I was able to receive the Mars Express spacecraft. I could see on DSN Now that it was locked to Goldstone.
Fading in the signal shown below was because I still have to tweak PstRotor and the rotator controller (Green Heron) driving the BIG-RAS Az/El to deal with the very narrow beamwidth (0.69 degrees) produced by the 3.5m dish at X-band.
