Once you have the satellite dish, you will want to line it with mylar, or even some tin foil with the reflective side out. The satellite dish is shaped like a parabola. The light concentrates to a point called the focus. You don't need to be a mathematician to figure out where this is. The satellite dish was created to do the same with sound waves so the receiver unit shoud be set out at the the focus.

By removing the receiver and putting something that can hold water, in our case, a #10 can, we were able to focus the sun raise directly on the can. We found that we could boil water in as few as 10 minutes in direct sunlight.

Of course, we also found this took a long time to feed a whole troop of boys and we ended up using a propane stove, but it was a fun experiment, and in an emergency, it would provide a hot meal.

(More coming later along with some pictures)