In article , Robert Casey
writes:

Contests working Earth-Mars contacts should be interesting, when
you remember that speed'o light means that radio signals take
about 5 to 15 minutes one way to make the trip...

If my math is right, the one-way transmission time works out to between 188
seconds at closest approach to 688 seconds maximum.

But you can count on contest ops to figure a way to make that work. Use the
transmission time as a 'buffer' of sorts. Not a problem.

SO2R is just the beginning.

73 de Jim, N2EY

In article ,
(N2EY) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article , Robert Casey
writes:

Contests working Earth-Mars contacts should be interesting, when
you remember that speed'o light means that radio signals take
about 5 to 15 minutes one way to make the trip...

If my math is right, the one-way transmission time works out to between 188
seconds at closest approach to 688 seconds maximum.

Well, it's not correct. The 188 seconds is pretty close but the 688 is
way off because I added the Earth orbit radius rather than diameter.

Oh, my! Had anyone else come up with those numbers you
would have sent many a multi-screen message accosting
them of error-prone perfidy! :-)

Here's a more exact calculation:

Per NASA website, the Earth's orbit varies from 149.5 to 149.7 million
kilometres and Mars' orbit varies from 204.52 to 246.28 million
kilometres.

The closest the two planets approach is 204.52 - 149.7 = 54.82 million
kilometres
The farthest apart they get is 246.28 + 149.7 = 395.98 million
kilometres

Using 0.3 million km/sec (that's 300,000,000 metres/sec) as the speed
of light, we get:

54.82 / 0.3 = 183 sec (3 minutes 3 seconds)

395.98 / 0.3 = 1320 sec (22 minutes 0 seconds)

give or take......

What, no EXACTNESS? Speed of light isn't EXACTLY
that nice round figure. Tsk, tsk.

But you can count on contest ops to figure a way to make that work. Use the
transmission time as a 'buffer' of sorts. Not a problem.

Ingenious use of the delay interval would permit pretty good contest
rates. Of course the ability to work duplex would be a plus.

I am non-plussed. With a 44 minute round-trip time you wouldn't
need any sort of T/R switch, just solder some lands on a PCB to
do the same job to go from Rx to Tx and back again. :-)

For rag chewing, contacts between fixed nonpolar stations on each
planet up to about 12 hours long are possible if the locations are
just right at both ends.

You could WEAVE the rag material, cut it to shape, sew it up
in the time of those contacts... :-)

SO2R is just the beginning.

Of course the reason no one - professional or amateur - has been
awarded the Elser-Mathes Cup is because it requires operators at both
ends of the QSO. Human space programs won't be in a position to do
that for decades yet.

Ah! One of the remarkable OBVIOUS statements! :-)

I hearby nominate you for three or four votes in the Department of
Redundancy Department.

Okay, now what is the PATH LOSS and what kind of Tx power is
needed at each end for a given S:N ratio?

Can you get by on amateur radio power levels? Without violating
any of the regulations?

How about Doppler Shift? How much?

Interplanetary denizens want to know! :-)

LHA / WMD

On 09 Aug 2004 23:45:24 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

In article ,
(N2EY) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article , Robert Casey
writes:

Contests working Earth-Mars contacts should be interesting, when
you remember that speed'o light means that radio signals take
about 5 to 15 minutes one way to make the trip...

If my math is right, the one-way transmission time works out to between 188
seconds at closest approach to 688 seconds maximum.

Well, it's not correct. The 188 seconds is pretty close but the 688 is
way off because I added the Earth orbit radius rather than diameter.

Or perhaps grabbed the distance data off the wrong website?


Oh, my! Had anyone else come up with those numbers you
would have sent many a multi-screen message accosting
them of error-prone perfidy! :-)

I can see the reply now: "Wrong again, ..xxx.......", followed by the
usual Jim-style rub-the-nose-in-it verbiage.

Here's a more exact calculation:

Per NASA website, the Earth's orbit varies from 149.5 to 149.7 million
kilometres and Mars' orbit varies from 204.52 to 246.28 million
kilometres.

The closest the two planets approach is 204.52 - 149.7 = 54.82 million
kilometres
The farthest apart they get is 246.28 + 149.7 = 395.98 million
kilometres

Using 0.3 million km/sec (that's 300,000,000 metres/sec) as the speed
of light, we get:

54.82 / 0.3 = 183 sec (3 minutes 3 seconds)

395.98 / 0.3 = 1320 sec (22 minutes 0 seconds)

give or take......

What, no EXACTNESS? Speed of light isn't EXACTLY
that nice round figure. Tsk, tsk.

Precision is for others.


But you can count on contest ops to figure a way to make that work. Use the
transmission time as a 'buffer' of sorts. Not a problem.

Ingenious use of the delay interval would permit pretty good contest
rates. Of course the ability to work duplex would be a plus.

I am non-plussed. With a 44 minute round-trip time you wouldn't
need any sort of T/R switch, just solder some lands on a PCB to
do the same job to go from Rx to Tx and back again. :-)

For rag chewing, contacts between fixed nonpolar stations on each
planet up to about 12 hours long are possible if the locations are
just right at both ends.

You could WEAVE the rag material, cut it to shape, sew it up
in the time of those contacts... :-

No problem, though, for someone who takes 48 hours to reply to this
little Usenet-based QSO - and fails to reply in context of the thread
at that.

"I just noticed that I was incorrect - all by myself!" Duh.


SO2R is just the beginning.

Of course the reason no one - professional or amateur - has been
awarded the Elser-Mathes Cup is because it requires operators at both
ends of the QSO. Human space programs won't be in a position to do
that for decades yet.

Ah! One of the remarkable OBVIOUS statements! :-)

And a brilliant one at that.....you need someone on the other end of a
QSO? Sunnavagun!


I hearby nominate you for three or four votes in the Department of
Redundancy Department.

But not the Department of Mathematics.


Okay, now what is the PATH LOSS and what kind of Tx power is
needed at each end for a given S:N ratio?

Can you get by on amateur radio power levels? Without violating
any of the regulations?

How about Doppler Shift? How much?

Interplanetary denizens want to know! :-)

LHA / WMD

73, Leo

In article , Leo
writes:

On 09 Aug 2004 23:45:24 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

In article ,
(N2EY) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article , Robert Casey
writes:

Contests working Earth-Mars contacts should be interesting, when
you remember that speed'o light means that radio signals take
about 5 to 15 minutes one way to make the trip...

If my math is right, the one-way transmission time works out to between
188
seconds at closest approach to 688 seconds maximum.

Well, it's not correct. The 188 seconds is pretty close but the 688 is
way off because I added the Earth orbit radius rather than diameter.

Or perhaps grabbed the distance data off the wrong website?

Nah...just Internet QRM...he was reading video instead of
morse. :-)


Oh, my! Had anyone else come up with those numbers you
would have sent many a multi-screen message accosting
them of error-prone perfidy! :-)

I can see the reply now: "Wrong again, ..xxx.......", followed by the
usual Jim-style rub-the-nose-in-it verbiage.

Plus a nice little macro to insert in other, later messages,
claiming that the error-maker "always made errors" and
isn't trustworthy and may not use deoderant...

Here's a more exact calculation:

Per NASA website, the Earth's orbit varies from 149.5 to 149.7 million
kilometres and Mars' orbit varies from 204.52 to 246.28 million
kilometres.

The closest the two planets approach is 204.52 - 149.7 = 54.82 million
kilometres
The farthest apart they get is 246.28 + 149.7 = 395.98 million
kilometres

Using 0.3 million km/sec (that's 300,000,000 metres/sec) as the speed
of light, we get:

54.82 / 0.3 = 183 sec (3 minutes 3 seconds)

395.98 / 0.3 = 1320 sec (22 minutes 0 seconds)

give or take......

What, no EXACTNESS? Speed of light isn't EXACTLY
that nice round figure. Tsk, tsk.

Precision is for others.

True, but the unique criticsm is HIS... :-)

But you can count on contest ops to figure a way to make that work. Use
the
transmission time as a 'buffer' of sorts. Not a problem.

Ingenious use of the delay interval would permit pretty good contest
rates. Of course the ability to work duplex would be a plus.

I am non-plussed. With a 44 minute round-trip time you wouldn't
need any sort of T/R switch, just solder some lands on a PCB to
do the same job to go from Rx to Tx and back again. :-)

For rag chewing, contacts between fixed nonpolar stations on each
planet up to about 12 hours long are possible if the locations are
just right at both ends.

You could WEAVE the rag material, cut it to shape, sew it up
in the time of those contacts... :-

No problem, though, for someone who takes 48 hours to reply to this
little Usenet-based QSO - and fails to reply in context of the thread
at that.

Think of it as "a buffer." :-)

"I just noticed that I was incorrect - all by myself!" Duh.

Well, at least he NOTICED...

He took the time out to look...away from Worked All Usenet
logging...

SO2R is just the beginning.

Of course the reason no one - professional or amateur - has been
awarded the Elser-Mathes Cup is because it requires operators at both
ends of the QSO. Human space programs won't be in a position to do
that for decades yet.

Ah! One of the remarkable OBVIOUS statements! :-)

And a brilliant one at that.....you need someone on the other end of a
QSO? Sunnavagun!

He could have called for the comic strip character "Obviousman!"


I hearby nominate you for three or four votes in the Department of
Redundancy Department.

But not the Department of Mathematics.

I keep having the crazy idea that a relative was working at JPL
when they had that conversion error on a probe a while back.
The one that failed due to the wrong constant or something,
metric instead of english...

Nah.

Okay, now what is the PATH LOSS and what kind of Tx power is
needed at each end for a given S:N ratio?

Can you get by on amateur radio power levels? Without violating
any of the regulations?

How about Doppler Shift? How much?

LHA / WMD

On 11 Aug 2004 03:25:21 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

snip

BTW, you mentioned in an earlier post that you have a Patent
registered to you, in the area od radio. Interesting - mind if I ask
what it was?

U.S. # 3,848,191 - Pulse Compression Receiver with AGC, granted
in 1974, assigned to RCA Corporation. Sole inventor on patent.
Missed two other applications due to being too close to prior art.

Basically it is a pulse processor and operating in an environment
of many different pulses, only a few of which come close to being
in synchronism with the system. The application was for SECANT,
an R&D project for 4 years at RCA, the acronym standing for
SEparation and Control of Aircraft by Non-synchronous Techniques.
SECANT was an aircraft collision avoidance system and in direct
R&D competition with a modified helicopter station-keeping system
done by Minneapolis-Honeywell. Both the RCA and Minnie-Honey
systems were flight-tested successfully in PA at the (former) Naval
Air Development Center (NADC). Flight testing local in PA, at the
Patuxent River range, and at Key West, Florida, observed by FAA
troops locally as well as USN and USA people. First air tested at
Kern County Airport #7, Mojave, CA...("Mojave International" in fun)
now the site for Scaled Composites, the first company to make it
into space privately.

SECANT worked at 1.6 GHz nominal bandcenter. The final version
(of three) in 1974 used 8 SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) matched
bandpass filters done on quartz substrates (done at Sommerville,
NJ) at 1 MHz bandwidths centered between 55 and 64 MHz. I got
to play with the SAW filters and the final version IF-detectors plus
the pulse pre-processor. Al Walston, W6MJN, and I shared
responsibility for the Tx and Rx parts. Jim Hall, KD6JG, was the
engineering technical manager over the last two versions of
SECANT and all of RIHANS, another R&D program, again working
in L-band at the RF level.

The U.S. government scuttled any more testing funding in 1974 for
both the RCA and Minnie-Honey systems, opting for a less-tested
ATC transponder modification which is now in use, but only by the
air carriers and large executive aircraft.

TCAS? (now TCAS II)

Military doesn't use that
system. MIT had friends in higher places to sway gubmint opinion.

RCA Corporation began (well before WW2) as a place to hold
U.S. patents and try to keep control on the then-new technology
of radio. As a result, RCA built up a fantastic legal staff and pursued
patent filings aggressively. Back in '74 the average cost of any
electronic patent application cost about $6000, nearly all of it being
taken up by the non-patent-office Search costs. Corporate
employees of the lower levels would not get much chance to patent
anything unless a corporation had a large legal staff. I was lucky in
getting a sole patent award and don't sweat the other two at RCA
nor the one multiple-inventor patent turn-down at Electro-Optical
Systems (Xerox division). [sometimes good minds think alike! :-)]

Very impressive - thanks for the summary. I'd never heard of the
SECANT system before.

That would have been quite a challenge back in '74 - all discrete
components, no microprocessors, no CAD tools or circuit
emulators....real hands-on design work.

No wonder you're getting so much heat here, Len - clearly, you are out
of your league. Are you aware that there are folks here who have
successfully assembled their own Elecraft kits, and built working CW
transmitters from plans? :-) :-) :-)

Subject: European Mars probe to use 80meters to look for Martian water?
From: Leo
Date: 8/11/2004 6:31 AM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

On 11 Aug 2004 03:25:21 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

snip

BTW, you mentioned in an earlier post that you have a Patent
registered to you, in the area od radio. Interesting - mind if I ask
what it was?

U.S. # 3,848,191 - Pulse Compression Receiver with AGC, granted
in 1974, assigned to RCA Corporation. Sole inventor on patent.
Missed two other applications due to being too close to prior art.

Lennie-to-English translation: "I was a bit too slow copying the files so
I could make it look like it was my idea first."

No wonder you're getting so much heat here, Len - clearly, you are out
of your league. Are you aware that there are folks here who have
successfully assembled their own Elecraft kits, and built working CW
transmitters from plans?

None of the "heat" Lennie is taking is due to his alleged professional
career or what he thinks he knows...it's about lying, antagonism, profanity and
not doing what he says he's going to do.

In short...he's a creep.

Steve, K4YZ

Leo wrote:


No wonder you're getting so much heat here, Len - clearly, you are out
of your league.

By golly, "Leo", I think you're on to something! In other venues, Len
might hold his own. Here, he has yet to become a beginner.

Dave K8MN

In article , Dave Heil
writes:

Leo wrote:


No wonder you're getting so much heat here, Len - clearly, you are out
of your league.

By golly, "Leo", I think you're on to something! In other venues, Len
might hold his own. Here, he has yet to become a beginner.

Pish off portly old ham.

YOU show us How To Begin Being A Sociable HUMAN.

You haven't even started that yet, let alone "beginning."

Go play with your fancy I-can-download-firmware-on-the-Internet
a la Star Trek Transporter. Have an oriongasm.

Pbthbthbthbth...

LHA / WMD

Len Over 21 wrote:

In article , Dave Heil
writes:

Leo wrote:


No wonder you're getting so much heat here, Len - clearly, you are out
of your league.

By golly, "Leo", I think you're on to something! In other venues, Len
might hold his own. Here, he has yet to become a beginner.

Pish off portly old ham.

Sounds like you've finished off some port, old man.

YOU show us How To Begin Being A Sociable HUMAN.

After you, Alphonse.

You haven't even started that yet, let alone "beginning."

Go play with your fancy I-can-download-firmware-on-the-Internet
a la Star Trek Transporter. Have an oriongasm.

I have downloaded such firmware and I do play quite often with the
Orion.
I'll do as I choose. You do as you can. Why, by the way, don't you
stop giving ORDERS?

Pbthbthbthbth...

Settle down, kindly old soul. You'll soon have your breath back.

Dave K8MN

Len Over 21 wrote:


RCA Corporation began (well before WW2) as a place to hold
U.S. patents and try to keep control on the then-new technology
of radio. As a result, RCA built up a fantastic legal staff and pursued
patent filings aggressively. Back in '74 the average cost of any
electronic patent application cost about $6000, nearly all of it being
taken up by the non-patent-office Search costs. Corporate
employees of the lower levels would not get much chance to patent
anything unless a corporation had a large legal staff. I was lucky in
getting a sole patent award and don't sweat the other two at RCA
nor the one multiple-inventor patent turn-down at Electro-Optical
Systems (Xerox division).

I was an AMTS at the old RCA Sarnoff Lab in Princeton from 81 to 87.
Got 11 patents there. Mostly television signal processing. That
ended when GE raped and pillaged RCA about 15 years ago.... :-(