[TigeriusKirk]

The always entertaining saveitforparts Youtuber tried to make a "very small array" from a bunch of used satellite mini-dishes. He ran into all sorts of fun issues with his ad hoc construction.

I admire the guy for having as much fun with his failures as his successes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dklYG70e7R0

[dekhn]

The lesson I've learned (I build scientific instruments as a hobby) is not to chase the latest, greatest ideas. Many of them only work because the implementors have access to a huge knowledge base, excellent parts and facilities, and really smart people to help debug the inevitable problems.

I focus more on maximizing what i can get out of a simple hardware setup, which means skipping anything that involves complex digital analysis or extremely sophisticated and sensitive equipment; it means more time having fun and less time debugging problems where I actually don't know enough to debug the problem.