Comsat relay not working?

[LeftyRighty]

Fresh install as of yesterday, no mods installed. 

According to the wiki information about the various communication devices with a lvl 2 tracking station and the communotron 16-s should have more than enough range to reach the relay, those relays have 3 HG5s mounted and deployed (checked) which should give them coverage over the entire kerbin system... and yet.. no relay link back to ksc (additional relays stations are turned off).

Am I missing something or did they break the relay network recently? (if so, great return to the game... )

 

[Streetwind]

Welcome to the forums

To get a link between two antennas, you need to multiply their two antenna powers together, and take the square root of that. The communotron 16 series (both types) have 500,000 antenna power; the HG-5 series has 5,000,000 antenna power. Unfortunately the combinability exponent for them isn't documented anywhere I know of (because that would be too useful, apparently), so I'm just gonna guess 0.75, because that's the number quoted for the 88-88. That would put a craft with three HG-5's at just under 11,400,000.

SQRT(500,000 * 11,400,000) = just under 2,400,000 meters

If the combinability exponent was 1.00:

SQRT(500,000 * 15,000,000) = just under 2,750,000 meters

The distance between Kerbin and the Mun is 12,000,000 meters. In other words: you don't have enough range. Not nearly enough. If the vessel in orbit of the Mun had three HG-5's as well, then it would be enough - barely.

 

From looking at your screenshot, you were working with the assumption of 500,000,000 range for a single HG-5, and 158,000,000 for a single communotron-16. However, those numbers are only for direct communication with the tracking station. They are precalculated numbers for your convenience, using the antenna power of the tracking station and the antenna power of the antenna in question in the above-mentioned square root formula, so you don't have to calculate it yourself everytime you build a vessel. But for going from one vessel to another, you must use the antenna powers of those vessels. The tracking station is not involved at all.

Upgrading your tracking station does not magically make your onboard antennas better! It only lets the tracking station itself reach them at longer distances, not other vessels.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Streetwind

[Biggen]

Go here: 

This will tell you what range you can expect to get out of every antenna in the game.