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Alternative Uses For an Old Satellite Dish?
ya really writes "My family has one of those BUDs (Big Ugly Dishes) sitting in their back yard still. The other day they asked me if I would take it apart for them. Aside from simply recycling it, I was wondering if there are any alternatives for its use. It was one of the last made before DirectTV and Dish took over satellite broadcasting, and even has a digital receiver. I'd say it was made around 1996."
1. Attach to tin foil hat
2. Read other people's minds.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Maybe you could use it to create some sort of device that would beam correct spellings into /. submissions?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
... for condors
Nothing quite like a giant pudding bowl?
Strap on a chain, paint it gold and wear it around your neck Flava Flav style
Loud sex.
Yes there 'r'. :)
Either grow a massive hedge in an orb shape and stick this dish in the top section just like the DeathStar from StarWars or just do the same thing (sans hedge) with paper mache.
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well i overheard a neighbor talking to a friend about how he had harvested a whole bunch of BUDs from his backyard. He just said he was planning on smoking them; I'm not sure what that means but good luck with your search.
That's what I was going to suggest...you just made me realize how much of a redneck I am. Or maybe the fact that my 5'1" 70-year-old grandmother shoots groundhogs with a 12 guage through a hole in her screen door should have made me realize it...she also has a glass eye and still manages to hit them...(And scarily, I did not make any of that up.)
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Obviously, nobody's thought of its best alternative use yet: Teach mice to skateboard and open a whisker circus!
Paint it black, make a giant white-gloved hand reaching out of the ground and tell the neighborhood kids you buried Mickey Mouse in your backyard...fun for the whole family.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I say combine two ideas: bird bath and solar death ray.
Yum, BBQ!
Many people have used woks etc as Wifi dishes. Now turn the tables. Use the dish as a huge wok and go for the stir fry world record.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
lol, I misread that as burglars, I think a home defence deathray would be a great idea.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Set up a WiFi link to the moon.
-R
It's parabolic, so if you can drag it inside, make it into an elliptical reflector dish.
Ah yes, the infamous VSRSSBBOOVSD.
Hmm... maybe I could use one to boost my AT&T cell reception...
Life is short: void the warranty.
Lower the dish so its pointing directly at your neighbours house.
When they enquire about it; Tell them you can now read their email.
Refuse to elaborate.
My shrink's neighbour has a dish pointed at the shrinks office. He says the paranoid delusionals love it. I love it too. Total coincidence.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
Ah yes, the infamous VSRSSBBOOVSD.
...of death.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
You could fall asleep in it and broadcast your dreams all over the world.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
It's not hard.
No sig today...
The one in my neighbor's back yard is made of solid sheet steel, weighs a ton and is about 8 feet in diameter. You could stir-fry enough Chinese food in it to feed the whole neighborhood. Hmmm, might be a good way to get rid of all those pesky feral cats roaming the neighborhood too.
As long as all your enemies are less than three feet away, it makes a damn fine death ray. Now you know where the "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" proverb comes from.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Being a true villain, I always feel the need to strap my enemies to a bench within a metre of my death ray so this should work perfectly!
[All Your Fish Are Belong To Us]
LMAO! Yeah.... I know.
The Joke {----------------
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The HUGE space in between
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Your Head {---------------
Satellite dishes make excellent directional 802.11 antennas.
Just remove the existing LNB from the dish and replace it with a homemade antenna, like a biquad, tuned for your band-of-interest (i.e. 2.4GHz ISM for wi-fi). Make sure you get a powerful (high RX sensitivity & high TX power) wireless card with an external antenna jack
Me looking at access log and seeing wireless hack attempts... Looks at old C band dish and old microwave oven.. Hmm let's scan for the intruder and see if that laptop likes a KW of focused power in the WiFi band!
The truth shall set you free!
A solar oven...
OF DEATH!
The problem is, it probably easily heats up to 485F as well. Then it explodes, heating your home much more rapidly.
fun/dangerous
Are you suggesting that the two can be mutually exclusive? Will the wonders never cease!
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Wok!
We had some old woks and we did a similar thing?: drill a hole in the base, fill with soil and gravel and plant alpines - the result a very nice wokkery.
Maybe you'll be able to watch tv during rainstorms.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Load it onto the back of a truck, head into the mountains, and recreate the shield-sled scene from Willow.
Coat it with aluminum, polish it, and attach a powerful lamp in place of the reciever.
aim it at your neighbors and fire it up.
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Heh - my pacifist, critter loving Mom was complaining the other day about the rabbits eating her vegetable garden. I told her "Shoot 'em - it's not like we don't have enough guns around the house". She pooh-poohed the suggestion, saying that she doesn't know how to operate one, and she was too old. I pointed out that her father was blowing away groundhogs out of the back window with his double barreled shotgun well into his 70's, and they are very simple to operate, and it just so happens we have that VERY SAME shotgun in the safe.
I'm thinking the rabbit population is going to get quite a bit smaller around the R1.0 household shortly.
PS - she asked my brother to blow away a couple of rabbits, but by the time he grabbed a gun they were...occupied. He put down the gun, stating that he just couldn't kill a male while so engaged - it just seemed wrong.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Put a speaker or microphone in the focus, hang a bed sheet over it so no one can see what it is. Then whisper instructions to the crazy people down on the street. Play music only they can hear.
Or point it at the neighbors house and listen in.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That's why if the truck needs to stop abruptly, the driver does so by turning sharply and launching the dish riders out into the snow.
My father-in-law pointed his straight up and drilled a hole in it so water would drain. He filled it with soil, and now grows water melons in it. I love seeing him get the step later out to pick water melons.
For radio uses- add one high powered tesla coil and, well go figure :).
You think this would actually work? Cool. One more thing to have my friends bail me out of jail for.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
We actually did this in college - pointed it at the paranoid administrators who thought we had nothing better to do than listen in on their conversations.
In retrospect, it probably didn't help that we drew attention by having a flickering red light, wore headphones and pointed at them and laughed. One time, they closed the curtains (like THAT would help).
Every time we'd stick it out the window, they'd send security guards - but, we'd take it down before they arrived.