Your relays outside Kerbin's SOI

[eddiew]

I've been developing a habit of sending a combination relay/lander for the first surface missions to a planet, putting the bundle into a polar orbit before separating.

Sure, there will be times when things on the surface are unreachable, but... just timewarp 20 minutes. Any more effort than this is more trouble than it's worth, imo 

[KerikBalm]

So I have OPM with the comm buff disabled.

I sent this relay to Plock: 

I sent this first to kerbin orbit, and then to a mod planetoid I have that has the exact same SMA as kerbin (its at a fake "L4" lagrange point), on a very eliptical polar orbit, so when KSC doesn't have line of sight, this relay will:

However, I noted that even that can't communicate with my plock relay at plock apoapsis, so I made this:

And drove it far enough away from KSC so that it doesn't load in the physics bubble and impact other performance. 25x RA-100s

I also sent a 3x RA-100 relay to neidon.. its on a "grand tour" swinging by Sarnus and Urlum, where it will drop 1xRA-100 probes, which are enough to connect to KSC.

For plock and Neidon, I may send additional relays for local system coverage, but I'm only going to have the single large relay hub(7x RA 100 for plock, 3x RA-100 for neidon) for sending signals back to KSC.

I still haven't figured out a convenient way to get a 25x RA-100 relay to the other side of Kerbin, which could be nice

[eddiew]

23 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

I still haven't figured out a convenient way to get a 25x RA-100 relay to the other side of Kerbin, which could be nice

Stuff 'em in a mk3 cargo bay and build a drone round them?   Admittedly it'll be quite long... but people have made double-orange spaceplanes, so it should be viable.

[KerikBalm]

yea, but I actually want them to be arranged in an array, not just a circular cluster. You'll note my other arrays weren't arranged just to be in a compact.

2x orange tanks aren't a problem for my spaceplanes

 

[Gordon Fecyk]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

I still haven't figured out a convenient way to get a 25x RA-100 relay to the other side of Kerbin, which could be nice.

Build a barge and float it out there? Or maybe an Ekronoplan stacked with RA-100s?

 

[KerikBalm]

a barge would be really slow... I might as well use a rover then

[Gordon Fecyk]

9 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

a barge would be really slow

Ya sure enough. Then I remembered Matt's Ekranoplan. Might be possible to build a larger version of that and take a few 5 x 1 arrays around Kerbin, then dock them together. Much like the Russians might have done with that craft to get large bits of equipment somewhere quickly.

Or if fast sea travel is too tedious, then just fly said 5 x 1 arrays sub-orbital, parachute them down, then dock or klaw them together. Do antenna arrays on multiple craft still magnify signal strength when docked?

Edited February 10, 2017 by Gordon Fecyk

[KerikBalm]

yea, I was thinking of dropping of pylons of 5 at a time, but that is tedious... 5 out and return trips just for that?

I madea piggyback mount, and just start pulling negative Gs, then release... but I can't get the contraption much over 500 m/s with the array mounted - I suppose I coulgo 1/4 of the way around kerbin, drop an array, then return, then go 1/4 of the way in the other direction, and drop the other array.

But in the end, I think being able to uplink 50% of the time when Plock is at apoapsis is good enough for me, not to mention the possibility of relaying through the Neidon link when neidon is in position

[WuphonsReach]

On 2/10/2017 at 0:15 PM, KerikBalm said:

a barge would be really slow... I might as well use a rover then

Or a rover using the BonVoyage mod (which drives it in the background).

For outside Kerbin's SoI, I usually end up with 3-4 RA-2 or RA-15 relay sats around each of the major worlds, with HG-5 relays around the moons.  But I have a mod that rebalances the stock antennas and pays me to put those relays up.

Around Kerbin's SoI, I put up huge heavy relay sats in 80Mm Ap/Pe orbits of various inclination.  Plus at least two in Kerbin synchronous orbit (5h 59s 9.4s orbital period) above KSC.  These have up to 7 dishes of a particular tier on them.

(I run with extra ground stations disabled and a DSN strength of only 0.02 in the settings.)

[Archgeek]

On 2/10/2017 at 9:24 AM, KerikBalm said:

[...] can't communicate with my plock relay at plock apoapsis, so I made this:

HEH, 'almost looks like a kerbal HAARP if you squint.  KAARP?

[WuphonsReach]

On 2/10/2017 at 0:24 PM, Gordon Fecyk said:

Or if fast sea travel is too tedious, then just fly said 5 x 1 arrays sub-orbital, parachute them down, then dock or klaw them together. Do antenna arrays on multiple craft still magnify signal strength when docked?

They should, since once docked, it's considered a single vessel.

Also - DMagic's Orbital Science mod has the oversized and undersized SIGINT experiments.  Once upgraded (later in the tech tree), they act as extremely powerful relay antennas.

My relays around Kerbin.  These are at 75Mm Ap/Pe (Kerbin's SoI radius is about 84Mm), which have an orbital period of around 100-110 days.  It's not scientific by any means, but I probably get 99% effectiveness.

The one satellite orbit around the equator is 80Mm.

[Joltout]

I haven't set up a full network on every planet yet, but I have found that sending 3-4 relays to a planet in varied distant orbits works best for me (since my keo-stationary orbits desynced so much over the years). Usually I position them 5 million km's apart with 2 being on an equatorial orbit (one on the 90 degree vector, the other, 270) and the other 2 (or 1) on a polar orbit set up (similarly, 360/0 vector vs 180). So far all my relays look the same but I haven't found a reason to make them more powerful yet (probably will come Jool/Eeloo).

Current network set up:
 

Spoiler

 

What all the relays look like:
 

Spoiler

 

[IllicitMedic]

I see absolutely no reason to have more then 3 KSO relays...ever...3 KSO sats with the longest range antenna and the entire system is covered aside from maybe a few minutes you're on the wrong side of a planet but we are talking minutes.