Roadrunner

[Christopher Horner]

Lon D. McPhail wrote:

> Have you any idea what a x-mitter that B-casts 24 miles weighs????


Bzzt! You're an OS1, so I'm sure you know what the AN/WSC-3 is.  For the 
  rest of you, it's a 30W FM/100W AM line-of-sight, and satcom 
transceiver (225-400MHZ), a real overengineered navy radio.  I don't 
have the specs here, but I can pick one out of the rack and carry it to 
the bench myself; call it roughly 100 lbs of thirty year old 
overengineered crap.  I can also speak from personal experience that 
100W UHF will get you over 200 miles of communication.  HF band xmtrs 
will go even farther with only 100w (How far is it to Rio De Janeiro 
from San Diego Bay?).

Granted it's an expensive piece of equipment, but mass production of a 
radio with all silicon amplifiers and trimmed down (all the unneccessary 
BS removed) would cut weight and cost to more acceptable levels.

-Chris Horner
ETC(SW)
(Chief Electronics Technician (Surface Warfare Specialist))