maxdreamland

Hi, using RemoteTech 2, I was wondering what would be a good way to figure out the right antennas for communication satelites. Here's what i've come up with so far, and would like to get your feedback before i'll try and implement this "for real". My goal is to have three satelites around both Kerbin and Moho, in a 120° split, to cover the whole of each planet for ground and orbital operations. Each of those satelites would have a Communotron 32 (range 5 Mm) so the three Kerbin satelites (2868 km orbit) can "see" each other (and mission control) with just the Communotrons. And the same would be true for the three Moho satelites (those would be in a similar ~2800km orbit). Now to relay connections between those two clusters i figured each of the satelites would have a dish. The dishes of the three Kerbin satelites would be targeted at "Moho". Given that the "viewing cone" angle of the dish is wide enough that should enable each Kerbin satelite to "see" each of the three Moho satelites with just one dish. The same but vice-versa would be true for the three Moho satelites. The tricky part now is to figure out which dish has enough range AND a "viewing cone" angle that is wide enough. To figure out the range requirements i figured the theoretical maximum distance between Kerbin and Moho should be the sum of their Apoapsis's (or whatever the plural of Apoapsis is called :-) ). The idea behind this "formula" is if both planets reach their Apoapsis, but on opposite sides of Kerbol. I couldn't think of a scenario where they would be further apart, right??? (objections?) This, of course, leaves out fators caused by different inclinantions, but i figured for a "ball park" number it should be close enough. For the "viewing cone" angle i figured the angle should be OK if the width of the cone at the maximum distance between Kerbin and Moho (see above) is at least twice the orbit of the Kerbin satelites (2 x 2868km = 5736km). That way all three Kerbin satelites should "fit" within the cone and therefore be "connectable". Given that the Kerbin Apoapsis is 13.599.840.256m and the moho Apoapsis is 6.315.765.980m, my range requirement would come down to just short of 20 Gm (19.915.606.236m to be precise). And using the formula "cone width" = 2 * tan(alpha) * distance, where alpha is the "viewing cone" angle of the dish, i come up with an angle of roughly 0.00825° Do you think this is the right approach? Or am I missing something? (i've been using RemoteTech only for a short while) regards Max

I looked at the plugin and it seems to be just what i was looking for. thank you for pointing it out to me! best regards Max

Hi, on several occasions i found myself in the situation where i had built a satelite or something along those lines, and after deploying it, finding out that the number of RTG's i had put on it were too few to sustain a constant electric charge. usually i try to add up all the electric charges from all the antennas, dishes etc. manually and then figure out the number of needed RTG's. But sometimes you decide to change the antennas or something like that and forget to update the RTG's. It's very annoying to keep track of this manually. is there a way - maybe a mod - to easily find out the total electric charge needed by the vessel? best regards Max