Boaty McBoatface

Me, I'm afraid. Never really liked him. Don't know why. Sorry.

Would've been much better to name the ship after his brother Dickie. They could've named the two subs "Loves" and "Darlings".

 

I feel somewhat short changed by Boaty McBoatface. This is Boaty Mcboatface - its on board a much bigger bit of kit docked in Cardiff Bay this weekend:

 

Here's actual Boaty mcBoat face..... The best bit of PR the British Antarctic Survey ever did do... And didn't follow through upon... Anyway, I'll soon be back onboard

Sent from my Pixel 9 Pro XL using Tapatalk

 

Carrying on the tradition, SpaceX's satellite terminals are named Dishy Mc Flatface

 

That's soooo disapointing, I genuinely thought it was a big impressive thingy

 

If it’s the same class as James Cook it’s impressive

 

Hi Sam. Here hoping all is well down south! I've just watched an old BBC programme called Ice Station Antarctica showing the weatherman Peter Gibbs going to the Halley Research Station and travelling down from SA in the Enerst Shakleton as he reminisces about his first trip down as a a young man in the '80s

 

When I was writing programming software for McMurdo distress beacons (nothing to do with the Antarctica station), I created example programming records for distress beacon paperwork for the user manual. The ship name I used was often Boaty McBoatface..

 

Do those distress beacons still use GaaS chips instead of Silcon?

I used to work, in the early 90’s, at GEC Marconi, Caswell in the fab making them….not sure they are still required these days as there are far more satellites up there now!

 

Hey Sam, I was looking at the pictures and I’m thinking it don’t look tooo cold to me then I actually noticed that you sneakily had your hands in your pockets when you was up in the drivers seat.

Ozziedog,,,,,,, stay warm bud

 

No, ours were all silicon. These days 406MHz is easy for silicon MOSFET power transistors.. and with a radio synthesiser and modulator chip , the Silabs Si4464 that uses silicon with MEMS inductors and capacitors to make an oscillator at about 3GHz that it divides down to 406MHz. . In a chip package about 7mm square. Apparently the tech came from an FM stereo tuner chip made for Nokia phones when that was a thing. Great fun making the beacon hop from 121Mhz aircraft homing to 161MHz AIS to 243MHz (military homing and 2 way comms) to 406MHz (satellite distress) to send all the different signals needed from a 20mmx50mm circuit board.

 

Ozziedog,,,,,,,,,yes exactly what I thought, I think

 

I don’t have the specs we were using, the chip substrate was Gallium Arsenide, they were used apparently due to taking 1/10th the power and having potential 10 times the switch rate.

That said, this was 32 years ago and silicons ingot size of 12 inches plus played against a GaaS ingot of 3.5inches, plus the huge leaps in chip density mean GaaS remains niche, if not fully disappeared.

Delicate buggers too!