Re: Shared printers
You didn't happen to work on the software for the Turftrax tracking system? That was developed by Scientific Generics and we took it out into the field and got it working, back when I worked for them.
Posts by Stephen May
24 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2007
The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom
Northrop Grumman's MEV-2 gives Intelsat satellite a new lease on life until the next rescue in another five years
British Army does not Excel at spreadsheets: Soldiers' newly announced promotions are revoked after sorting snafu
Intelsat orbital comms satellite is back online after first robo-recovery mounting and tug job gets it back into position
Friday 24th April 2020 12:02 GMT
Re: Old stuff
We still use TWTAs a lot in Satcomms. I've got a trio of wideband (12.75GHz-14.5GHz) 750W TWTAs in use. Solid state can't match the bandwidth and the power of them. I've got a few C-Band SSPAs that are meant to be the equivalent of TWTAs, but in practise they're much more unreliable. SSPAs are OK for up to 200W, anything above that it's masses of phase-combined SSPAs or TWTAs
Monday 20th April 2020 13:16 GMT
Re: Old stuff
Working in the industry, generally what causes a satellite to reach end of life is the lack of fuel for station keeping. The electronics tend to keep on working far longer than the fuel. The transmitters generally are Travelling Wave Tube Amplifiers which tend to just keep going and have no views on being faster or slower. The only things I've ever seen to cause a satellite to reach the end of it's life are the fuel running out or a catastrophic failure that kills it dead in orbit, such as when AMOS 5 died.
When the satellite network has literally gone glacial, it's vital you snow your enemy
Friday 4th October 2019 12:10 GMT
Re: Satellite in the 90's
One of our antennas here is VERY attractive to the feathered gits, they're always pecking in the feed window for some reason. Still, can't beat the story as relayed to me by an engineer from ViaSat. They'd installed one of their big Ka-Band antennas somewhere in South America for a customer. Now, the antenna wasn't due to go into service yet, so once the acceptance testing was complete, the customer shut it down. And by shut it down, they shut EVERYTHING down, including the feed system dehydrator. Birds then pecked in the feed window and the feed totally flooded, including the amplifiers. They were left with a rather large bill to replace it all......
Roses are red, Ajit Pai is tickled. Broadband from SpaceX gets him out of a pickle
Engineer named Jason told to re-write the calendar
Watch SpaceX's rocket dramatically detonate, destroying a $200m Facebook satellite
Full duplex! Bristol boffins demo Tx and Rx on the same frequency AT THE SAME TIME
Ten... PC games you may have missed
Japan develops powered armour suit for nuke workers
Bogged-down Mars rover may be doomed to chilly death
US Navy's robot stealth carrier plane unveiled
'I don't blame pilot', says San Diego jet crash father
Wiggy scuffle pampernaut lawyers back in court
Byron review calls for computer game ratings
Thursday 27th March 2008 12:16 GMT
Again, the parents are the problem
We can have all the ratings systems in the world, but they're for nothing if the parents buy the games for their kids. A case in point: I was walking through the town centre the other day and saw a lad of around 11-12 years old with a copy of Clive Barker's Jericho. This is a VERY horrific game, and rightly deserves it's 18 Certificate. It was fairly obvious that his Dad had bought it for him, as 'It's only a game, innit?'
eBayer punts Wii for £1m
Microsoft hawks Home Server
Racist Reg hacks slammed for 'vitriolic hatred'
Friday 31st August 2007 10:24 GMT
Someone need to get a sense of humour
I think Mr. Bevan could do well to take a leaf out of the book of an ex-colleague of mine who was from Wales. When confronted by the inevitable 'sheep shagger' comments, his only reply was 'We shag them and you eat them!' See, Mr Bevan, that is what is technically known as a JOKE, as is the original article.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
