Antenna range?

[Feudal]

I'm no networking, well, anything. I know very little about networking besides that bits are 8 times smaller than bytes. So looking at the antenna stats tells me nothing, but I want to know how far an antenna's range is. I'm trying to get some dank science from the sun but I don't want to lose connection from Kerban. (even though my flight will be manned but I'm convinced that losing connection to Kerban will also lose all that cool maneuver control, when you click on the flight path and you create a maneuver in advance. I think I'll lose that.)

[Venorek]

You will not lose your ability to create maneuvers as long as there's a pilot present. You will with probes, however.

I find the deployable satelite like comms works well enough at Duna and Eve. Tho, a few satelites around the mun and minmus don't hurt. :)

Edit: Sorry, forgot to mention I fail to remember the names of that particular comms. lol. The 88-88 is better than the one I speak of.

[Shenji]

Looking into the antenna description, you can find the range of the specific antenna. Also check the in-game manual, about the communication network. Almost everything you need to know is there.

[Pembroke]

The Tracking Station upgrade level also affects the range. If you want a *really* long range you need to setup a relay network but that's not necessary for the Kerbin-Min-Minmus system, although they are nice to cover the dark sides of the moons so you don't lose contact.

[strask]

Originally posted by Venorek:

You will not lose your ability to create maneuvers as long as there's a pilot present.

Just to clarify this: Engineers and Scientists can't make maneuver nodes unless they have a connection to KSC, but pilots can do it without that connection.

Originally posted by Pembroke:

The Tracking Station upgrade level also affects the range. If you want a *really* long range you need to setup a relay network but that's not necessary for the Kerbin-Min-Minmus system, although they are nice to cover the dark sides of the moons so you don't lose contact.

So the KSPedia actually has a very detailed description of what Pembroke is talking about, but it's a little hard to read. There's a table that covers the classes of antennas and what ranges they have when talking to each other. I'll edit this in a moment to include a screenshot of the table I'm talking about.

Basically you take the power of the antenna on your ship, multiply that by the power of the relay it's talking to or the power of KSC's Deep Space Network (DSN), and then take the result of that multiplication and find it's square root. The result is going to be a number of meters that the connection will work over. Note that the various antennas and stuff have ranges in the G range, that's Gigameters which is 1,000,000,000 meters each I believe.

So then look at Kerbin's altitude above the sun, that's the distance you want to cover. You can do the math backwards and just take that distance, multiply it by itself, and then divide it by the power of your DSN to get the power of antenna you need.

[strask]

Ok so here's the table of antenna ranges from KSPedia:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=799634007

And kerbin's altitude seems to be about 13-14Gm above the sun.

So we can look it up in the table, depending on what level your tracking station is.

Looking at the table for values around 14Gm, under the tracking station columns, we find that if you have a Level 1 Tracking station you will need a class 5 antenna on your ship, while a class 4 is more than sufficient if you have a level 2 tracking station, and even class 3 will work if you have fully upgraded the tracking station.

Class 0 == 5k rated antennas
Class 1 == 500k rated antennas
Class 2 == 5M rated antennas
Class 3 == 2G rated antennas
Class 4 == 15G rated antennas
Class 5 == 100G rated antennas

[strask]

Just for completeness if you are doing the math with the square root of the product of the powers, and want to know the powers of the tracking station upgrade levels:

Level 1 Tracking station = 2Gm
Level 2 Tracking station = 50Gm
Level 3 Tracking station = 250Gm

[Feudal]

I only play in Science mode, I tried Career once and it's just. No. Too much to worry about, I already have a hard enough time putting rockets into an orbit around the equator and not something off 5 degrees. Let alone... rendezvous with a station. So the level of anything doesn't matter.

Strask, you have taught me logics.

[brontok28]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/149099-commnet-signal-strength-calculator-antenna-selector/

this one will do the job for ya

[strask]

Originally posted by ｈａｄｅｅｈ . . .:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/149099-commnet-signal-strength-calculator-antenna-selector/

this one will do the job for ya

Nice, thanks for the link! :)

[Feudal]

Originally posted by strask:

Originally posted by ｈａｄｅｅｈ . . .:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/149099-commnet-signal-strength-calculator-antenna-selector/

this one will do the job for ya

Nice, thanks for the link! :)

I barely even understand it lol...