Electric Screwdriver Rotator

I’m thinking of building a simple azimuth only rotator. The antennas are not very high gain, so the beam width angles are wide. Therefore, one can probably point the antenna 30 degrees up and let it be. When a satellite is overhead, it is so much closer that it should work well enough on a side lobe.

The simplest rotator that I can think of is to use an electric screwdriver, since I have a Black and Decker driver here on my desk. An accurate code wheel will need some thought, but it isn’t rocket surgery.

Has anyone done this before, or am I on my own here?

You may be on your own with that one herman. There might be some benefit in trying out your plan with a simple DC motor and the gears/bearings from the SatNOGS v3. Failing that I’ve seen a few servo based attempts but to be honest the SatNOGS design is a little more robust.

What can we do in the community to help you?

Alex, g7kse