cannot talk to satellites via comment!

[MaxZhao]

I'm having problem with communication, I have a HG-5 antenna on all of my satelite with only KSC as a ground station enabled. However my one satelite which is blocked by Kerbin and cannot talk to KSC is unable to talk to other satelites, why does this happen? http://imgur.com/j05BjlZ(screenshot)

[John Cochran]

The HG-5 is rated at 5.00 Mm. The range between two antenna is the square root of the product of each antenna's rating. So When KSC is talking to an HG-5, the maximum distance is one of (100 Mm, 200 Mm, or 1.12 Gm depending upon the level of the tracking station). But when a HG-5 is talking to an HG-5 the maximum range is only 5.00 Mm or a mere 5000 km (a bit less than half the distance between Kerbin and the Mun). Looking at your image, the distance between the satellite dead center in the image and any of the other satellites revealed by the Commnet lines from KSC is significantly larger than 5000 km.

[MaxZhao]

1 minute ago, John Cochran said:

The HG-5 is rated at 5.00 Mm. The range between two antenna is the square root of the product of each antenna's rating. So When KSC is talking to an HG-5, the maximum distance is one of (100 Mm, 200 Mm, or 1.12 Gm depending upon the level of the tracking station). But when a HG-5 is talking to an HG-5 the maximum range is only 5.00 Mm or a mere 5000 km (a bit less than half the distance between Kerbin and the Mun). Looking at your image, the distance between the satellite dead center in the image and any of the other satellites revealed by the Commnet lines from KSC is significantly larger than 5000 km.

 

Thank you very much! This perfectly explained the problem, seems I need a better antenna

[John Cochran]

What I would suggest with relays using HG-5 's is to place a little trio of them orbiting small moons and such to allow communication on the far side for probes and rovers. For the Mun, having 3 of 'em orbiting at about 250 km would allow one of them to get a signal from KSC and the rest pass the signal around to the far side of the Mun allowing for coverage everywhere except for about 30 degrees around the poles (if you deposit another three in polar orbit, then the poles also get covered completely). Same applies to Munmus.

After you have that in place, you need to make Kerbin a reliable transmitter and receiver. I think that 5 relays can handle that all the time fairly cheaply. First, you want a little trio of relays in equatorial orbit capable of always seeing Kerbin and relaying the signal among themselves with 100% signal strength. Not sure if an HG-5 is capable of doing that, pretty sure that a RA-2 can handle it. The purpose of those three is so that a signal from KSC is always visible for your main relays. They are a pair of extremely powerful relays in polar orbit 90 degrees out of phase when each other. That way at least one of them is always visible either above or below Kerbin's poles. For those two relays, you're going to eventually want them to be RA-100's.

Now, let's assume you wish to do a lot of research near Duna. Place one or two high powered relay(s) in the Duna system in high polar orbits. Their purpose is to pick up a signal from Kerbin. Then place a few constellations of cheap HG-5's around Duna and Ike. The result will be near complete coverage of the Duna system (unfortunately, you won't be able to communicate when the line of sight between Kerbin and Duna is blocked by the Sun). Either deal with it, or perhaps setup another relay in another system. You may even eventually setup some powerful relays in a solar orbit unassociated with any planets. The idea is to have a few powerful relays pass the signal long distances and the forward those signals to cheap constellations of lower powered local relays to handle probes, rovers, and bases.

I suspect that KSP 1.2 is going to cause quite a few players to study up on resonate orbits.....