Antenna tracker base unit

[pk-surfing]

Hi,

A couple of months ago I bought an antenna tracker kit from ElectronicaRC
http://tinyurl.com/666nu3k
and it worked fine for a while but once I added a lipo and Duo5800 rec on the horizontal aluminium pan frame it showed up that the plastic base box top flexed allowing the tracking parts to wobble when turning, I also lost teeth off the pan servo gear so decided to rebuild the unit in a new box.

I bought a diecast aluminium box, good quality and with a very smooth top to the lid, the lid itself being 3mm thick.

I drilled out the top to take the 360 degree turn winch servo used for panning, a GWS 125 1T and then thought about how to positively hold the servo in position.

You can see from the photos that I built up two side spacers from 5 laminates each of 1mm ply, these were glued to the u/s of the lid and are also held in place with 4 small bolts.

I then made up some rigid clamping bars using aluminium strip I had, it is 25 x 4 and I filed it out to closely clear the installed servo.

The servo has the rubber grommets installed in the mounting lugs but it is then snugly clamped in when the 4 nuts and bolts are tightened, the spacer dimensions are such that when tight the bolts just nicely clamp the servo in place.

On the top the large winch pulley is fitted and I have applied a very small amount of silicon grease (for servo gears) onto the u/s of the pulley so it rotates smoothly against the box surface at any point where it touches, as installed there is a tiny gap between the pulley and box surface, just the thickness of a piece of thin paper.

I haven't installed the hardware holding the antenna and tilt assembly yet, will do that tomorrow, but the whole thing runs nice and smoothly on my servo tester.

Just need to drill holes in the box side for the servo lead to exit, velcro my EzAntenna controller to the side and then screw the box down onto the 200 x 300 mdf 'bird table' I have my tripod quick release fixed to, then see how it all performs at Friday afternoons flying session.

[Funky Diver]

If you ever need a Reflector, let me know ;)