Morning (PDT) Derek Wildstar (Guy Garnett),

-----Original Message-----
From: Derek Wildstar
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2015 5:34 AM
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Subject: Re: [TML] FF&S

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

Both the QSDS and SSDS have masers which matched with TNE FF&S when I
checked in T4 FF&S to match them I could not find the maser. Hopefully,
Donald McKinney will be in contact with you to get the skinny on why the
maser communicator was chucked and then forget my proposed errata for
reinstating them in the Consolidated T4 Errata.

Tom Rux