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

On 9 Aug 2004 09:45:24 -0700, (N2EY) wrote:

(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.

Thanks so much - but we figured that out two days ago.......


73 de Jim, N2EY

73, Leo

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

Leo wrote in message . ..
On 8 Aug 2004 11:14:28 -0700, (William) wrote:

Leo wrote in message . ..
On 07 Aug 2004 19:53:20 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

In article , PAMNO
(N2EY) writes:

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.

Hmmmm - interesting math for an MSEE..... and quite incorrect indeed.
Good amateur-level research skills, though.

His skills rusty. Works for EPA. Solve global warming.

Nah - I'm pretty sure he claims to have had a successful career in
electrical engineering - a field where, I suppose, being off by over
100% in a calculation would be completely acceptable (so THAT'S what
fuses are for!). 8*p

That can all be blamed on the pentium floating point zero.

That, and being employed full time in amateur radio, and currrently
working on his WAU (Worked All Usenet).

One day he woke up and found out he had a career in amateur radio.

A bit short that. According to my Almanac ("World Almanac and
Book of Facts 2001" published by World Almanac Books, p. 587),
the minimum to maximum distances of Earth to Mars are 34 to
249 Million miles. At 186,000 Miles per second, the ONE-WAY
time works out to be 183 to 1339 seconds (3.05 to 22.3 minutes).

Now them's the right numbers! The following website confirms these
distances, after conversion from km to miles:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/planets/mars.htm

Ooops. Now you've done it. Never, Ever back-up anything Len has posted.

Here comes Hiram's Hammer! Duck!

A single two-way contact, one transmission at each end, would
take 6 to 44 minutes to complete, depending on the planetary
positions. The limiting factor on "rag chews" would be limited by
rotation of both planets. :-)

...and those periods when that pesky moon of ours is in the path

But it's made of cheese. Only very slight attenuation at HF.

Of course, Rev. Jim, you WILL call MY calculations "incorrect"
or "wrong" or something like that, won't you? :-)

Careful - you're contradicting an expert here - ain't never been wrong
yet! 8*p

Hi, hi!

It's true! Just ask him!

73, Leo

Jim won't say. Just ask him! Hi, hi.

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:
On 10 Aug 2004 03:16:20 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:


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...



We've read enough of those, alright!


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... :-)


True enough!


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." :-)


Or an intellect amplifier.... :-)


"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...



Heh.


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!"



Reminds me more of "Politenessman", from the old National Lampoon
magazine.....with his steel hankie......remember him?


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.



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?

Betcha there gonna be chicken sounds on that...no answer. :-)


So far, you could hear a pin drop.......


Tell us what the path loss and and Power for a given S/N ratio is. Pick
a position and date for that position and tell us.

Tell us what the Doppler shift is over the length of a short QSO,
starting at the time of of start Assume a DX style QSO with a short
feedback message to insure actual reception on both ends, say a 35
second transmission. Then the same for the return message.

At this time I don't know those details, but I'll be happy to check
them out once you've posted them. Add anything I have forgotten but may
need to know.

- Mike KB3EIA -

Subject: European Mars probe to use 80meters to look for Martian water?
From: Mike Coslo
Date: 8/11/2004 9:47 AM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

Tell us what the path loss and and Power for a given S/N ratio is. Pick

a position and date for that position and tell us.

But...but...but...MIKE!

Lennie's STATED position is that he's "...only here to civilly debate the
Morse Code test issue"

You wouldn't expect him to VIOLATE his own WORD, would you...?!?!...He's a
PROFESSIONAL!

73

Steve, K4YZ