On 22 Sep 2006 12:25:42 -0700, "art" wrote:

The light beam idea is different but it does bring complications
For drag race you haven't got time to focus a light upon a small object
that is moving

Hi art,

If time is of the essence, it is of the essence for all applications
equally.

Fior this purpose it would seem that a small verticle would suffice
such that the vehicle responds immediatly to commands I assume that as
a drag race range power is not a requirement.

A vertical has no way to discriminate falling out of a path. UNLESS:

The aeronautical system of holding a flight path is with (or was with)
VOR. It's been a long time since I've maintained navigational
equipment, so my terminology may be way off. However, the concept is
there are two transmitters sending an Morse N and a Morse A, such that
if you are on the flight path, you obtain a constant carrier (the dits
and dahs overlap through carefully balanced antenna arrangement at the
transmitter).

If you should diverge from the flight path, there is an imbalance in
signal and one code predominates over the other. For the race car,
the burden would be on translating which code dominates, and what
course correction would be necessary.

Richard was your aproach
based on a guided path control by light rays such that contact would
provide a direction correcting command?

A light path can be resolved with hardware logic instead of software.
Faster performance.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC