Trackers
Gentlemen,
Thanks for your continued support of the RTG, in my humble ( well, not really) and admittedly biased attitude, I think that you can't go too far wrong with an RTG. Its cheap, powerful, reliable. The pesky problem with aircraft is always antennae; now I have even heard rumors of Carbon Fiber wingtips, and if that catches on, installations can get tricky... On the issue of output power, its really kind of a nonsensical argument. Almost any amount of power will work extremely well a few thousand feet AGL, but you NEED power at low altitude, especially given the compromise antennae aircraft seem to be locked in to. A larger issue is Digipath, but even that is red herring. The single most salient factor in how much you aggravate the neurotic APRS ground-Nazis is your transmission interval. Keep it reasonable and the self-appointed APRS police won't have a reason to whine ( They don't really need a reason, they will find something to whine about anyway!)
Sam, I am both sorry and glad that the MT-400 has been dropped. That's the bad news. The good news is that we will be replacing it with a 2 Watt transmitter in roughly the same form factor. Another piece of good news is that we are about to release our 8-10 Watt, TT4 based transceiver. Its frequency agile, and uses the same case as our RTG-50 ( without the mega amplifier) I am not really sure how we will use a transceiver in an aircraft yet...we may have to make it ignore signals and transmit when we want. At altitude, it will receive signals out to the Horizon +15%, and that's a long way! It will never be quiet, so ordinarily, a transceiver would never transmit, since it would think the channel is always busy. My dream is that we can get the new generation of aircraft I-Gate operators to add a second receiver to their i-gates, and seize a channel to be used for things outside class G airspace. This will take the steam out of the people on the ground, and let aviators run faster data rates without packet collisions.
73,
Allen AF6OF
VHS/Byonics
Major, of his Majesty King Obama's Air Force Auxilary, Squadron 22