The Wireless Internet Cantenna gets Dished

Step 3 Now it get's interesting

Okay, I have a good idea what needs to happen. Using the quickly taped-up feed horn, and looking through it, I marked the most likely point where the cantenna needs to aim at on the dish. I didn't need to worry about the fact that the feed horn is off to one side, because in the left to right direction it will have to go between the four bolts on the dish. I simply drew a line between all the bolts, in a vertical direction, then used the feed horn to find how far up or down to mark a horizontal line.

Then I marked where the open end of the cantenna would be if you were to take a square, such as a framing square and held it up against the end of the can, with the other end resting on the support arm. Only, I eyeballed this part by looking across the end of the feed horn, and noticed that it almost touched the end of the steel LNB support. So that will work for a reference.

One more reference mark, though I'm not sure if it's as serious. The direction the cantenna is pointed away from the dish. I decided to just use the taped-up feed horn to compare against the cantenna. The can just needs to be parallel to the horn.

And, I got lucky. It just so happens that the very back end of the cantenna is right where the steel LNB support would meet, if it were simply extended.

And this is where I figured out how to finish this. I just found some handy flat stuff that looked like it was the same width as the LNB support arm. Turned out to be that wood stuff you use to shim door frames up against the studs of a house. And this is where I decide a hacksaw is not a good idea for cutting the flat wood stuff (possibly cedar) after knocking over stuff a couple times, I go for simply using the utility knife to cut the wood strips. This requires two simple slices, one on each side at the same length, and then just bend the wood at the slices and it snaps like cutting glass.

I also use that knife to cut one end of each wood strip to fit the cantenna better. A shallow half-moon whittling job that is going to get covered up in tape, so don't do too nice a job of it!

Then, because vinyl electrical tape holds tighter than duct tape when stretched, use that to attach the wood strip that goes to the very far back end of the cantenna. I only tape it a little bit at two places, and double check the wood strip position by holding the dish in one hand, the cantenna in another, and the taped-up feed horn in my third hand.

Once that first strip is figured out, go ahead and really tape it like your going to show McGuyver a thing or two about using vinyl electrical tape.

The second wood strip should go a little quicker as you only need to keep the cantenna aimed at the mark on the dish while positioning it all up.

Then some more tape to keep the cantenna from moving around on the end of the wood strips.

But wait, there's more!