[MilCom] Blue Angels, Low Power?

[Bill Jones]

> I saw the Blues practice at Pens Tuesday and Wed.
> 
> The first day I was on the base and sometimes noted poor signals from the team.
>  I was using a new BR330T. This radio was pulling in good sigs from planes at
> Whiting many miles away.  
> 
> The second day I watched practice from the beach which was a distance of about
> 4-5 miles.  The signals were also weak there even though I could clearly see
> the planes over the water (except for when the team was pointed straight at me,
> sigs picked up).
> 
> I'm thinking the team intentionally runs low power during the performances. The
> ARC-210 radio has this capability. See
> 
> http://www.rockwellcollins.com/ecat/GS/Communication_Systems.html?smenu=101
> 
> I'm estimating they run less than 5 watts.
> 
> Anyone??

I guess my reaction is that I'm surprised that 5 watts would be considered low 
power.  You can go around the world on 5 watts on the right freqs and 
conditions, and 5 watts should be plenty good for any line of sight 
communications, and the general rule is not to use more power than you need.
   Anyway, what I was getting at, is that I suspect that power isn't the 
important parameter you were observing, but I'm guessing it had more to do 
with the antennas being used.  Ie, I'll bet that the placement of the antennas 
on the plane favor radiation out in front of the plane.  I used to have a 
2M/70cm mag mount on my wife's car, and it's position on the roof made the 
radio almost impossible to hear, even line of sight, when the car was coming 
at you, but radiated very well when going away.  I often listen to planes 
working in the MOAs and AR routes near me, and reception occasionally goes 
from pegging my meter down to barely receivable in a matter of seconds, when 
the planes turn. I've always assumed that this indicated some sort of 
directionality of the radiation pattern cause by the placement of the antenna. 
Also I've observed what I'm convinced is one plane blocking the signal of 
another plane, particularly when listening to two tankers refueling each 
other, ie I'll hear one of them strong, and the other sometimes won't hear at 
all, even though they are right next to each other with similar radios.   
  Anyway, interesting. 




Bill Jones         N3JLQ
Sweden Maine
wejones at megalink.net
http://www.megalink.net/~wejones