Minutes
Jixia: Actually, at first I also wanted to use the dish antenna. But unfortunately, when I just arrived here, I found that the technicians from the dish antenna manufactory already disconnected all the cables of the dish antennas. They are here to add RFI-shielding boxes in order to eliminate the RFIs from the dish antennas (and also install two new dish antennas). The work was not done until the day before yesterday, although the RFI is still not totally eliminated. We think the socket for the cables to pass through the box is not ideal.
But even if the dish antennas can be used, there still exists, I think, more difficulties than using dipole antenna. The beam of the dish is narrow: 4 degress, so we have to move the dish antenna to point exactly at the drone. Pointing error may be a problem. And pointing near the zenith is even more difficult when measuring the drone beam near zenith angle 0 degree, because the dish antenna must change its azimuth from e.g. 0 to 180 as soon as possible - note that the drone is still in the sky waiting for the dish antennas to rotate and the endurance of the drone is very limited. I'm not sure if it's possible or not. Maybe, I can have a try.
Also, the RFI from dish antenna is still not eliminated. We have to power off and on which brings at least 15 seconds more for each zenith angle.
So I think using a dipole antenna seems to be easier. The dipole antenna is fixed on the ground. Itsbeam shape is smooth and wide. The only er
ror comes from the simulation for the dipole beam.