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

Alternatively

[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!

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

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: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.

Re:Silly article:

[markov_chain]

You're right, this thing will never wok.

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.

And for personal communication...

[kanweg]

you can use a wokkie-tokkie

Bert

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?

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).