Hi, my name is Sergio and I'm from Milan, Italy.   I am a licenced radioham since 1975,  my callsign used to be IW2BDX at that time.  In 1988 after the CW code test, I begun IK2MMB.

Perhaps some of you already know me for my troposferic microwave activity on 5.7 and 10Ghz and not only for that.  Extensive activity  was carried out also with the old callsign.

In 1998 I decided to challenge EME starting from 23cm (in future on higher bands).  After more than one year of evening-work, in summer 1999 I was active, but on rx only.   It took till the second leg of the 1999 ARRL contest, three more months, to become fully active rx/tx.  

This is my 12 foot (11.483 exactly) 23cm EME antenna. 

It is fully homemade in aluminum and stainless steel.  The stainless steel tower was hand-made by a friend of mine, Roberto IW2LFH.

The reflector mesh is 0.55mm (wire) 5 x 5 mm hole size.   I don't have drawings of the dish as it was created day by day, I certainly have a ton of dirty hand sketches (somewhere).

The dish is dismantable (12 slices + support hardware) therefore the ribs are 24 even if from picture they may seem only 12.  They go by couples. This design was thought and put in place to avoid to be obliged to rent a truck crane for the installation on the tile roof and eventual dish maintenance. 

F/D is 0.50 sharp.

The feeder design is by W2IMU, full size (no external hybrid couplers). 

The antenna estimated gain is approximately 30.5dBi.    

With the shown setup the spillover temp is about 25° K. The evaluated total system noise is in the range of 45° K.

DD1XF preamp style with 18° K NF.

Final PA equipped with TH327 (from 1/2003)