From time to time I am checking my dish with the sunnoise. First I beam to the sun and later to a quiet part of the sky (you can see where the sky is quiet with the VK3UM EME Planner tool).

Below you can see some results  with my old 6.5m dish, measured with a Perseus SDR on a converter for 23cm, without AGC on.

Solarflux was 160 and the sunnoise measured was around 22 dB.This is only 1.5 dB below the theoretical maximum.

Date: 13. November 2011

Some comparison of solarflux:

Solarflux     Sunnoise (dB)
160                   22
 85                    20
 60                    19

Sun:

Cold Sky:

Own Echo at moon distance of 390.000 km (peak):