In article ,
"Sailct41" wrote:

I mean 46 feet. The cable in question is the brake status cable that
reports when the brake is on.

You need to swing a dish that fast when you are tracking a satellite or
space shuttle going very close to overhead at a relatively low altitude
(100-300 Nautical Miles). Our old antennas have to swing 15 degrees per
second in azimuth to keep up. What is truely impressive is to watch one of
our 60 foot antennas (220,000 bearing weight) move at those speeds. We are
currentily intalling smaller 13 Meter dishes that will not have to move so
fast in azimuth due to a 15 degree bend in the antenna riser that moves so
you can avoid the "Keyhole" (when a satellite comes overhead) tracking
problems.

That is totally Bull****....there is no way that one would need to
traverse 15 degrees/Sec to track anything in LEO....... Do the math,
if one were to track an object in LEO from horizon to horizon over
flat ground and directly overhead, that would be 12 seconds at 15
degrees/sec. The velocity of escape from earth orbit is in the range of
17,000 Mph so if one were moving faster you would leave earth orbit.
Now figure what the delta of the traverse in Degrees/second for an
object in LEO at max speed of 17000 Mph. It is certainly a magnitude
slower than 15 degrees/sec. Any Ham radio operator that tracks Sat's can
tell you that LEO Sats, even on overhead Passes take upwards of 10
minutes, to complete a transvers. Farther up in altitude only slows the
traverse. any lower and you would not be in orbit, but would enter the
atmosphere. Get real, Dufus...... Math surely isn't YOUR Friend....


Me who at least can do the math....