To heck.
cuhulin

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...

On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 06:58:46 -0500, wrote:

What's My Line?,,,

Close. I just remembered -- the show was I've Got a Secret.

tv series.I used to watch that tv program back in the
1950's.I don't know if it ran into the 1960's or not,I was busy in the
Army and other things.
USS Liberty was busy defending itself against those damn Israelies at
one time.It is tough about the Holocaust,but if I had been the prez back
then,Israel would Cease to Exist!!!
cuhulin

"matt weber" wrote in message
...

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 an overgeneralization. There's no way it would be easier to
moonbounce a signal to a location 20 miles over the horizon than it would be
to use tropo scatter.


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.

No civilian use as of when? The 1964 ARRL handbook says:

"Tropospheric scatter is prevalent all through the v.h.f. and microwave
regions, and is usable over distances up to about 400 miles."

The 1955 handbook also mentions tropospheric propagation at vhf and above,
but isn't so specific.

The biggest problem with early vhf work wasn't a lack of power or
insufficently high gain antennas, it was unstable oscillators. Those
oscillators drifted, and the radios had to have an otherwise excessively
wide IF bandwidth in order to allow for the drift. Getting a very narrow CW
bandwidth at vhf, for a decent signal to noise ratio, was almost impossible.

By the way, the 1983 handbook says:

"Most EME signals tend to be near the threshold of readability, a condition
caused by a combination of path loss, Faraday rotation and libration
fading."

It seems early 60s radio amateur equipment would work for tropo scatter, up
to about 400 miles. A later generation of such equipment would have to work
signals near the threshold of readability.




Admitted very limited bandwidth, but
Tropo needs tens of kilowatts.

The ARRL says different.


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...



There was, and is, a very good reason for the military to have moonbounce
capability. Things go wrong. Things break. Things get attacked. The more
options we have, the better chance we have to keep a bad situation from
getting totally fouled up. That's true, even for very difficult options
like moonbounce.

Frank Dresser

I wonder if Moonbounce had anything to do with www.kagnewstation.com
in Africa.Luke lives in Hattiesburg,Mississippi and he sometimes post at
www.pipelinenews.org (it might be a dot com) and he worked in
deciphering radio messages at Kagnew Station.Although Kagnew Station
was/is U.S.Army.
cuhulin

There was an ATT commercial Tropo link from Florida Keys to Cuba for
years. 900 MHz I think. The huge dishes (a pair) were standing for years
off Card Sound road. Probably gone now. I wish I had thought to play
radio using the feed point. Probably great 2 meter tropo DX on the ham band!

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...





--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"

The Lost Deep Thoughts By: Jack Handey
Before a mad scientist goes mad, there's probably a time
when he's only partially mad. And this is the time when he's
going to throw his best parties.