> I see a lot of speculation on the net concerning the size of Napoleon > Solo's antenna. =A0I suppose it's all in fun, Surely not! ? > ... but it really is easily > explained. =A0He only needs to be in range of a repeater. =A0There is no > reason to assume that his little radio is transmitting from Latvia to > DC, it only needs to reach the US embassy or consulate in Latvia, or the > embassy of a US ally, or a US ship at sea, or the repeater he left in > his hotel room, or even a US satellite. "it only needs to be" would perhaps better be "One explanation might be that it only needs to ..." Which is true. But he uses the device so universally and so apparently randomly, that such an explanation seems unlikely. Hence my: > ... As global range was available from all locations and as satellite or cellular networks or hackable networks to act as transport systems were all lacking during the devices' hey day it seems that HF is being utilised in some manner. > I posit that Occam would prefer an "early" implementation of a SPV system, easily enough discovered [tm] by those duly skilled in the art, with no super modern technology required, to the serendipitous ability to always be in range of some implausibly placed and available transit point. Unlike many other technologies, S.P.V. seems to require not too much more than pieces of suitably shaped metal plus some dieletrics and insulation - to yield inductors, capacitors & conductors as appropriate. Maxwell (and Poynting!) would have agreed that such a development was well overdue. The MIT paper is a clear smokescreen, written in 1948, in the era when the eager minds of Enigma, Trinity, Ultra, 382nd platoon, Bletchley, Tube metals, Manhattan Project and many more were being remelded into eg Operation Unthinkable (already by then very thinkable indeed), Universal exports, Gehlen organisation and their ilk.Half (about) the worlds finest brains were being turned to new pursuits as their past areas of expertise became redundant. The 1948 paper's "We've gone about as far as we can go" perspective is hardly what you'd realistically expect of the world conquering heros of MIT at that stage. Occam knows! > Kerry > RussellMc wrote: > > I was drivelling in a private email ... See. R --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .