Who Needs a Satellite Dish When You Have a Wok?

An anonymous reader writes "Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective? This is exactly how North Otago's newest television station 45 South is transmitting its signal from its studio to the top of Cape Wanbrow, in a bid to keep costs down."

Comments

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[tttonyyy]

More to the point, why pay to watch "45 South" when I can, more cheaply, scoop my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon from Honest Al's Hardware store.

MacGyver would be proud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you somehow add a ball point pen and chewing gum into making the dish?

MacGyver would just love that!

Re:MacGyver would be proud.

[Eudial]

Can you somehow add a ball point pen and chewing gum into making the dish?

No, that's how you make a death ray.

Wok, ball point pen, chewing gum... yeah, that's a death ray.
Wok, a froze chicken and duct tape, that's a satellite dish.

One of these will happen..

[freedom_india]

If the wok thing becomes more popular here, one or many of the following is bound to happen:
1. Prices of Wok will increase NOT due to increase in demand, but because sellers now think it serves a dual purpose.
2. FCC will jump in the bandwagon and demand wok makers put a minute dent to make sure it does not serve as a dish.
3. Homeland Security will jump on the FCC bandwagon and demand that woks be classifed as potentially "interesting" and "dangerous" weapons.
4. Carlyle Group will do a LBO against the largest Wok maker...Cheney will be richer.
5. Canada will impose a "musician's duty" on Woks since woks can be used to transmit pirated music...

that's all i can think of now.

Re:One of these will happen..

[frup]

This is in New Zealand... we're a little different to America

Oblig.

[cosmocain]

...and now the image quality is more like...err...sweet and sour? or: what about the signal being chopped? (that one takes a second more) duh.

Re:Check the numbers

[Da Fokka]

If you'd actually read the entire article, which admittedly is a lot to ask, you'd have known that the local TV station used the same setup as an uplink, saving a cool $20.000

And what's more...

[thetroll123]

You can't use a $20,000 commercial link to whip up a tasty and healthy stir-fry. There's a lot of value in that $10 wok.

Re:And what's more...

[Actinide]

You can't use a $20,000 commercial link to whip up a tasty and healthy stir-fry

To be fair, have you actually tried this?

Re:And what's more...

[jayayeem]

My wife can't do that with the wok either.

Tinfoil antenna would actually work

[maroberts]

As long as you make it the right shape, there's no reason why a tinfoil dish wouldn't do the job too.

You should see how thin some dishes on real satellites are.

Re:So basically they made a loss?

[mr_matticus]

Ah, but the Linux enthusiasts will bring in a third variable--satisfaction of doing it yourself in spite of obvious, more attractive solutions within arm's reach.

Note that Debian users cannot endorse this wok technique because the wok isn't fully open source.

Hire the guy who thought of it

[AceJohnny]

I want to hire the guy who thought about this and implemented it. Well, I wish...

I work at a Big Company, where over-engineering, paying 10k where 1k would do, and endless discussion on the color of the bikeshed happen thrice before lunch every day.

I became an engineer because of McGuyver... how disappointed I am with reality :)

Re:Hire the guy who thought of it

[16384]

I work at a Big Company, where over-engineering, paying 10k where 1k would do, and endless discussion on the color of the bikeshed happen thrice before lunch every day. Could the bikeshed be in cornflower blue?

It doesn't matter that much

[Anonymous Coward]

The reflector does a couple of thing. The most obvious is that it catches the signal and focuses it on the antenna. The bigger the dish and the closer it is to a parabola, the more signal to the antenna. The other thing it does is to shield the antenna from noise. The antenna in the article seemed to be nested right inside the wok. So, the wok probably improves the signal to noise ratio (SNR) by at least double and maybe by a factor of three or four (or more if it's done right). That's very important. If your signal to noise ratio is good enough, you can use amplification to get the signal you need. If the SNR isn't good enough, then almost nothing helps.

The wok will give a useful increase in signal strength but a more significant improvement in signal to noise ratio.

Silly article:

[Ancient_Hacker]

Rather silly article:

• A dish, for best effect, had better be parabolic. Most Woks are not.
• The $20K cost includes not only the $50 dish, but the feed horn, the Gallium-Arsenide MOSFET low-noise amplifier, downconverter, mount, and warranty.
• You have to compare the downside-- if the Wok setup goes down for any reason, what is the cost per hour to the station? Initial purchase price isnt a very good barometer here.

And this is not exactly new, mack in the 1970's we used to use $7 snow sleds to pirate HBO.

Re:Silly article:

[markov_chain]

You're right, this thing will never wok.

Re:Silly article:

[Ryatt]

if the Wok setup goes down for any reason So which part of the wok do you believe will fail first?

Re:So basically they made a loss?

[tttonyyy]

Note that Debian users cannot endorse this wok technique because the wok isn't fully open source. If only you'd written "open sauce" I'd have modded you +1 Funny. ;)

Not a satellite?!

[bobbagoose]

Can this actually be considered a satellite transmitter as it is only beaming signal to a receiver on top a hill?

Reruns Ought to do Well

[camperdave]

...and now the image quality is more like...err...sweet and sour? or: what about the signal being chopped?

How about: "I know I just watched the show an hour ago, but I'm hungering to see it again."?

Re:Reruns Ought to do Well

[Gryle]

I've heard the biggest problem is weight actually. Supposedly a rig like this weighs wonton.

Who needs a wok when there is a sattelite dish?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Among the many solar cooking devices shown in that site are a few solar cookers made from discarded sattelite dish antennae !!!!!

And for personal communication...

[kanweg]

you can use a wokkie-tokkie

Bert

Woks and their collanders, too

[DrYak]

Yes, woks can be good enough approximations of parabolic cross section.
And in fact, because of the wave-leght of TV, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.. (signals in the GHz range have centimetric wave-lengths) their corresponding colanders too can be used as cheap antennas, and have the aditionnal benefit of having holes (they are basically metallic mesh) and therefore having less friction against winds (and lower risk of being blown away during a storm). /. have featured a few time ago an article about using wok colanders as dishes for Wifi USB dongles, and a several techniques to check is the parabolic approximation is good enough.
- one technique, which can be done in the shop before buying the colander, is to use a small chain whose shape when suspended at both end and check if shapes match (checking if the shape is "catenary")
- another is to cover the colander in aluminium foil and checking if a parallel light source (the sun) converge to one single point (where the USB dongle should go once everything assembled)

See /. article " 4km WiFi Range w/ $5 DIY Antenna ". TFA is mostly the same idea but applied to a different signal in the same GHz range (microwaves).

Depends ...

[Physics Dude]

Actually the reflective efficiency depends on the power and frequency relative to the material conductivity and thickness. In order for a material to reflect an EM wave, it has to be capable of supporting the induced EM currents produce by the wave, and if I remember correctly, for maximum reflection the material has to be thicker than the skin depth at that frequency. If the thickness is much thinner than the skin depth then minimal reflection will occur and the EM wave may pass through the material or, if enough energy is absorbed by the material in the form of induced currents, the surface may be damaged.

This is the effect you see with thin foils in a microwave oven, and has led to the extremely popular misconception that you can't put metal into a microwave. With a minimal bit of observation anyone will see that the entire microwave enclosure IS metal and reflects the microwaves just fine without significant absorption. The only problem is with thin foils which are incapable of efficiently reflecting the microwaves.

I haven't calculated how efficiently tin-foil might reflect the high power radio waves mentioned here, but wouldn't put money either way without checking. (I haven't yet read the fine article, so I don't even know what power levels we're talking about).