Satellite dish as a directional antenna?

[HobbyMan]

Hey,
I’ve got a somewhat large satellite dish on my roof that I don’t use for TV anymore. I was wondering if I could replace the small satellite receiver with my own anttenna (like a simple dipole) and use it as a directional antenna.

[Username]

why not use for Sat Reception?
Depend where you life there are some hidden signals.

[aurgathor]

Satellite dishes are highly directional, so they are not going to make a good general purpose antenna unless you can point them at some specific direction, whether it's a geosync satellite, or some LOS terrestrial transmitter.

[HobbyMan]

Highly directional is the point, I want a directional antenna to track weather balloons. I’ve been receiving some weak radiosonde signals and I want an antenna that I can have pointed in the direction of the signal to get better gain.

[rtlsdrblog]

It's probably going to be tough to track a radiosonde with a dish unless you have a good motor mount and extremely accurate pointing abilities. But yes you could replace the feed with your own. But look carefully into things like dish illumination.

For directional radiosonde antennas most use a Yagi.