On Sat, 2 Aug 2003 18:24:44 -0500, "john graesser"
wrote:

Does it have to be a whip antenna? Why not try a horizontal circular loop?
Since you are working line of sight to the robot, the signal loss from going
from vertical to horizontal shouldn't matter much unless your transmitter is
extremely low power. A loop could be mounted inside a wooden or fiberglas
body and be pretty safe from attack.

If I believed this idea was workable I'd have implemented it by now.
You need to bear in mind that immediately beneath the polycarbonate
surface armor, there's a hulking great metal framework. Consequently,
sandwiching the antenna between the armour and the frame is going to
lead to unacceptable loss of radiated energy, I'd have thought. Unless
anyone knows differently..

Is there anything in the rules forbidding your installing a jammer
transmitter to cause the other bot to lose its command channel? Probobly a
poor use of what little electrical capacity the onboard battery holds,

There's a considerable amount of battery power on board, actually,
since the peak current draw is well over 100 Amps at times. A few
milliwatts for a local jammer would therefore be a negligable drain on
resources. *However* as you've already guessed, jammers are banned, as
are EMP pulse type weapons and such like. The reason for this is very
sound, when you think about it: it makes for really bad TV. The
producers want to see as much *action* as possible. You ain't gonna
get that if everybody's disabled everybody else's robot!
--

"I believe history will be kind to me, since I intend
to write it." - Winston Churchill