This Az-El Mount Is Worth Following

Communication with satellites often involves the use of high-gain directional antennas coupled with careful positioning to find and track the target. With a geostationary satellite the mount is either fixed or a single-axis polar mount, but when the craft is moving in a different orbit it becomes more of a challenge to stay locked on. An azimuth-elevation mount is needed to cover the whole sky, and [Ham Radio Passion] has one as a work in progress. It’s 3D printed and looks straightforward, making it a project to watch.

An az-el mount has two parts, the first being a turntable to set the azimuth, and the second being a horizontal rotating axis to set the elevation. He’s mounting the antenna to a piece of aluminium extrusion and driving it through a set of 3D printed gears driven from a 360 degree servo with a worm drive. He explains why the servo makes more sense to him here.

The result is not yet a finished project, but it shows enough promise to make it worth keeping an eye on. It’s by no means big enough for a huge antenna array, but we can imagine antennas for higher frequencies would be well within its capabilities. Meanwhile it’s certainly not the first az-el mount we’ve seen.