On Apr 29, 2015, at 7:44 PM, xxxxxx@comcast.net wrote:
> Hopefully, you can recall if the Maser Communicator was supposed to be in T4 FF&S and possibly on what page?

Ah, yes - I seem to recall that this was a deliberate change in FF&S2.

In earlier editions of Traveller, maser communicators were envisioned to be the radio equivalent of a laser - it would emit a coherent, unidirectional radio beam.  The problem is, masers simply don't work that way.  While they are used in radio applications as amplifiers, the use of a maser doesn't automatically make the communicator a tight-beam device.  Both Dave Golden and I had spent some time in the aerospace and satellite communications field, so this bugged us.

To better reflect physics and engineering reality, we added "directional" and "tight beam" options to radio communicators, and did away with the maser communicator as a separate device.  There probably should be a basic description of each type of communicator, its options, and how it works, but this didn't make it into the final manuscript - I apologize for the omission.

Bottom line, in T4 FF&S use a tight-beam radio communicator in place of a MT or TNE maser communicator.

---Guy "Derek" Garnett
xxxxxx@prismnet.com