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RemoteTech Advice


Reolos

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Hi all,

 

I am really loving my career play-through this time through using remoteTech. I am running 63 mods currently, and the ones that apply to my questions are RemoteTech, Community Tech Tree, RealChute and Tantares, I believe.

I set up 3 short range Sats at 2848400m for keosynchronous orbits. They each had an L-LG1 Low Gain antenna for their Omni range (4mm), and 3 Reflectron KR-7s (90mm) for transmission. It is my understanding, that the omnis should pick up the signal from the KSC, and the cone antennas will send the signal further. I aimed them each at the Mun, Minmus, and the Active Vessel.

I then set up Sats around Mun and Minmus, with a single 4mm Omni, four 90mm cone antennas, and four 25mm cone antennas. The idea was, aim one 90mm each at the SR ComSats around Kerbin, one each for active vessel, and the 25mm's for aiming at each other (the other sats around Mun and Minmus, respectively). These were all set up in 500k orbits, polar and equatorial.

Now, here is where I need advice: Are those designs sound? Are the orbits I chose, the right choice? Did I over or under engineer them? I ask, because when I send Scansats out, I still need three cone antennas in order to not lose connection, I can't get away with just omni's. I can send out flyby satellites with just omnis, but I tend to lose connection mid flight, and I ALWAYS lose connection before I can deploy chutes on my return to Kerbin, but Real Chute keeps my probes from dying. I have watched the "Remote Tech School" YouTube series by Grunfworks, but, I think I missed something. Does anyone have any advice?

Thank you.

 

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Not sure how the current versions do it, but when I did my last playthrough, I didn't bother with directional antennas for most inter-satellite communications at all, because the available omnis were more than enough.

The interesting part was, the Communotron-32 omni-antenna had a larger range than the geostationary orbit height for Kerbin. Therefore, a Communotron-32 stationary anywhere above the horizon for KSC would pick up its signal. And simple maths let me determine how many satellites I would need - four of them. This is the system in practical application. You can see two uplinks to KSC (for role-played redundancy), the square shape of the automatic inter-satellite links, and on the other side of KSC, a science satellite in a low orbit that is serviced by the constellation.

Omni-antennas need a lot of power, but these four sats only needed to run one single antenna each... which ended up being less Ec/s than four directionals a piece. And despite the much simpler and cheaper setup, I got an unlimited number of connections anywhere on Kerbin, and Kerbin orbits out to well past geostationary... as opposed to just the number of free directionals. And I used that unlimited number of connections a lot for really simple satellites. Need something that can connect another celestial body to Kerbin? Build two satellites, each with one Communotron-32 and one directional antenna capable of reaching that body. Put them on opposites sides of Kerbin, in the same orbit. Doesn't have to be geostationary, can be anywhere within range of the omnis. Boom, there's your eclipse-proof uplink to whatever receiving station you have at the other end-

Because you see, the fun part about the Communotrons is, they work pretty much anywhere. They don't depend on Kerbin's geostationary altitude... it just so happened that that altitude was near the max range for the interconnects of a 4-satellite constellation, and reached out far enough for all my needs (even polar scans of Kerbin with SCANsat). You can set the same all-omni network up at any given planet or moon, in any orbit that suits your needs... some SoI's are even so small, you'll only need one satellite to cover it (and probably another to avoid having deadzones). Mun and Minmus for instance only got two satellites each from me, all of the same make and model: one Communotron 32, and one DTS-M1 uplink towards Kerbin (where identical satellites passed the signal on to the omni network). Whereas on Duna, I set things up analoguous to Kerbin - four omni-only base satellites, two dedicated uplinks towards Kerbin, and two smaller dedicated uplinks towards Ike.

Edited by Streetwind
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