On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 07:58:12 GMT, "Frank Dresser"
wrote:


"matt weber" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 08:13:45 GMT, "Frank Dresser"
wrote:



Having it pointed straight up is the standard stowed position. At lot
less load on the mounting that way. However it could just as easily be
a tropo scatter antenna, and tropo scatter has the advantage that the
moon doesn't have to visible at both ends of the path.

Wouldn't a moonbounce setup, with high power and a steerable antenna, also
have tropo scatter capability? It wouldn't necessarly go the other way,
however. Equipment which works well enough for tropo scatter might not do
the moonbounce job.

Tropo is probably harder than Moonbounce. That's one of the reasons
there was no civilian use of Tropo. Amateurs were using 1 Kw in the
1950's in the 6 meter band. Admitted very limited bandwidth, but
Tropo needs tens of kilowatts.

I don't doubt the antenna was capable of Moonbounce, but by the mid
1960's, there wasn't a good reason to use Moonbounce any longer. The
geometry had to line up, so you might have wait a long time (12 hours
or more if you were unlucky), whereas a Sat was almost guaranteed to
come into view in a few hours, and if the military had bought capacity
on Syncom (and I have no idea if they did or didn't), they wouldn't
have to wait at all...