I can perfectly understand moonbase’s position.
Everyone — myself included — would love to own a dish like that. But people seem to ignore what is actually involved in keeping and installing a 2.8m dish.
First, you need the space. These dishes are enormous, even at “just” 2.8 meters, and they will occupy a significant part of a property.
Then there’s the infrastructure:
- proper foundations;
- roof reinforcement if mounted on a building;
- rotor and controller;
- suitable LNBs and feed assemblies;
- heavy-duty mounts;
- cables and accessories;
- and potentially even insurance in case a storm tears the dish loose and causes damage.
And of course there is also the most important requirement: obtaining your wife’s approval… which usually comes at a price of its own. :)
Compared to all of that, transportation is honestly one of the smaller problems. Rent a van, take a road trip, use the Eurotunnel if necessary. Being on an island complicates things, but it was still possible for someone truly committed.
The reality is that once you factor in all the associated costs, it barely matters whether the dish itself costs €0 or €500.
What is genuinely sad is that these large dishes are becoming increasingly rare. Very few companies still manufacture them, and producing single units is economically unrealistic because the tooling and pressing costs are extremely high. Once these dishes disappear, they are not easily replaced.
So I don’t think moonbase deserves criticism at all. He offered the dish — including accessories — for free. That was a generous gesture.
In the end, nobody was willing or able to commit to the real costs and effort required to collect, transport, install and maintain it.
And realistically speaking:
- for Ku-band, a 1.2m dish is already more than sufficient for most people in Europe;
- for Ka-band, smaller but extremely precise dishes are usually preferable;
- the real purpose of these giant dishes today is mainly C-band reception.
And C-band is not a casual hobby. It requires large, heavy, storm-resistant installations and a serious long-term commitment.
