jim (03/08/83)
Note that when a satellite sun outage occurs, the receiving dish is pointed directly at the sun, and acts as a solar furnace to cook the receive feed! I think that is one reason you never see unpainted dishes (the paint diffuses the sunlight). At the University of Michigan's radiotelescope site there was a strict rule that when you were done with the radiotelescope you had to point it far away from the path of the sun. I don't know if they ever actually cooked any feeds.
prgclb (03/08/83)
On a tour I took of an AT&T Long Lines earth station, I learned that Long Lines goes through quite a song-and-dance twice a year to avoid disrupting phone circuits during "sun conjunctions". Around each equinox, they go through a rather complicated procedure to reroute traffic to another earth station during those few minutes that the sun shines right into their dish. Carl Blesch Bell Labs - Naperville, Ill. IH 2A-159, (312) 979-3360 ihuxm!prgclb