Terry said:
Abdul had written about increasing the power output of a Radio
Control transmitter;
Abdul this group seems to agree; there is no one component that
can be pointed to to increase the output power. A complete
redesign of your units circuit would have to be looked at.
Even though under conditions in previous wars some incredibly
ingenious electronic things were done they were usually by people
who had extensive knowledge and/or experience. Just for one
example; there was the term 'Fox hole radio', which was basically
a simple detector that without batteries could receive very
strong broadcasts. Servicemen and prisoners of war used things
such as the impurity in a piece of coal and the point from a
broken razor blade to make what was then called a 'crystal
detector'. Not the same thing at all as the crystals used in a
transmitter.
It might be possible, and quite likely illegal (although the US
FCC or any other nations regulatory agency, including the United
Nations, probably don't have any jurisdiction on the moon!), to
feed the output of your radio control transmitter into a 'booster
amplifier'. Such a booster might be powered by 12 volts; so you
could use a car battery or several lantern batteries to power it.
These would be heavy and bulky.
In a unit such as yours the crystal determines the
frequency/wavelength of the transmission; don't mess with it. It
does not directly affect the amount of power output. To obtain
the the power output that your unit is designed for, the basic
frequency inside is probably 'amplified' (are you familiar with
that term?) by transistors. Those transistors require battery
power. If your unit is limited to 100 milliwatts as suggested as
typical and legal in many countries for RCC (Radio Control) and
you WERE able to increase the output power those batteries would
have to supply a lot more power. I would suggest to you that that
to achieve any significant increase in performance you would have
to at least quadruple (times 4) the output power. Even then as
the distance to the model plane, or whatever increases, the
amount it receives is probably reduced in accordance with the
square of the distance. In other words twice the distance would
require at least four times the signal. Four times the distance
would require sixteen times the power etc. Could you install a
more sensitive receiver in the model/plane? Use a better antenna
on either the model or the transmitter?
Finally I would observe that there are good safety reasons for
the power to be limited for RCC. A similar example might be that
one does not use cell phones, also of low power, in certain areas
such as hospitals to avoid interference with medical equipment.
Another example is that one is advised to turn off all radio
transmissions when entering an area where a construction company
is blasting/using dynamite etc. or where explosives are.
Under the present concerns about 'Security' in many countries due
to terrorism etc. it might NOT be a good thing to go messing
around with a RCC unit since in the wrong context it might be
misconstrued as an attempt control something more dangerous than
a model plane or even to use the model itself to cause damage?
Just a suggestion anyway.
By the way I don't think planes, model or otherwise, can fly on
the moon? Wrong kind of atmosphere! Hope you get home safely.
Terry.
Yes, I think I understand the technical intricacies involved here...
but just one more question: If the radio signals from my 40 MHz model
transmitter are expected to stay weak no matter how much the power
amplification, then how do we expect the alien recepients (if any) of
the 1974 Arecibo Radio Telescope message to respond back???
For those of us not familiar with this, an interstellar radio message
was sent to Messier 13, a globular star cluster in the constellation
of Hercules, on November 16, 1974, from the Arecibo Radio Observatory
in Puerto Rico. As M13 is 24,000 light years from Earth, and radio
signals travel at the speed of light, it will take 24,000 years for
the message to reach the star cluster.
Abdul Ahad
http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/