abica

Part of the fun of it is that there are plenty of ways to accomplish a specific goal. I quickly became obsessed with this mod as I've done quite a bit of work with man-pack FM radios in very hilly country where manned relay stations are a must (and automated ones with vintage gear put the "magic" in the term "FM"), so I geek out on this stuff. My standard comms plan: 1) Put up a nice big constellation of satellites w/ omnidirectional antennas. I like a 1/2 period orbit a.k.a. 3 hour orbital period (I think 1/2 period is the correct term?) These handle your relay traffic in/out of KSC. I go for 8, although that's really more than necessary. I do not want a momentary LOS blackout interrupting a critical maneuver or causing me to miss a window! Once I got burned by comms going down before I could extend solar panels...dead satellite. 2) Get the workhorse satellites on station. I rig these up with small dishes and omnidirectionals. The dishes handle specific comms targets and the omnis relay to my lower constellation. 3) This is where things get mission specific. Once I put a couple satellites with long range dishes on a highly eliptical polar orbit inspired by the Molniya Orbit. My idea was to maximize on-station time waaaay up over Kerbin and have one satellite ascending while the other descended. I figured "If I put it way up there I'm not gonna have LOS issues." Worked decently well. Sky's the limit on your mission-specific comms. Getting the bones of your network 100% solid is the best way to prevent future problems. Conducting a routine relay satellite launch to fix your shoddy network under the pressure of an upcoming maneuver window is not fun...although it's probably the most Kerbal way of doing things