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.
24 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2007
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
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.
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......
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?'
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.