Cranktown City spotted an eight-foot dish online and decided the usual starter kit of a small Yagi or a handheld weather dish simply would not do for a first serious look at signals coming down from space. What followed was a full-scale articulating mount planted on a large post set into a concrete pad, with a custom metal base fabricated underneath to hold the electronics that both receive the incoming radio and command the dish’s motion. That base carries a big metal gear driven by a wheelchair motor for the side-to-side azimuth sweep and a linear actuator that handles the up-and-down elevation, giving the whole assembly enough travel and speed to follow satellites as they cross the sky.
