• Big Asteroid - Less Chance For Earth - But Rapidly Increasing For MOON

    From c186282@21:1/5 to All on Thu Apr 3 21:30:48 2025
    XPost: alt.space, alt.survival, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh

    https://phys.org/news/2025-04-odds-asteroid-briefly-threatened-earth.html

    A huge asteroid that was briefly feared to strike Earth now has
    a nearly 4% chance of smashing into the moon, according to new
    data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

    The asteroid, thought to be capable of leveling a city, set a
    new record in February for having the highest chance—3.1%—of
    hitting our home planet than scientists have ever measured.

    Earth's planetary defense community leapt into action and
    further observations quickly ruled out that the asteroid—called
    2024 YR4—will strike Earth on December 22, 2032.

    But the odds that it will instead crash into Earth's satellite
    have been steadily rising.

    . . .

    Ok ... this one is kinda large.

    IF it hits the moon it COULD fling-up all kinds
    of debris - some large but mostly small. As such
    the threat to the ground would be relatively small,
    but the threat to SATELLITES might be MUCH more.

    Does NOT take anything large to trash sats - or
    the ISS. A cloud of BB-sized bits flinging off
    the moon would SHRED sats - and debris from those
    would shred even MORE. Earth orbit could become
    totally unsafe for anything for a year or two,
    or even more.

    No comm sats, no spy sats, no weather sats, no
    StarLink - a BIG problem for modern society. The
    Hubble or potentially even Webb telescopes could
    be at notable risk.

    Bad case ... assume NO sat was safe for maybe
    a DECADE. How WOULD we fill in ? Tick tick ...
    time to figure it out is shrinking rapidly.

    OR, if we move quickly, we might deflect the
    thing with a nearby nuke. Wouldn't take much
    of a push - but the AMOUNT of push required
    increases daily. Russia especially has a big
    inventory of large nukes - but Musk's Falcon
    Heavy is probably the best delivery vehicle.
    Of interest, PUTIN has long been very keen
    on asteroid-deflection capabilities ...

    Oh, modern military issues ... without spy
    sats they'd become MUCH worse. Nobody could
    confirm anything about what their enemies
    are doing - and GUESSING always trends towards
    the paranoid side.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Fri Apr 4 06:39:02 2025
    XPost: alt.space, alt.survival

    On a sunny day (Thu, 3 Apr 2025 21:30:48 -0400) it happened c186282 <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    https://phys.org/news/2025-04-odds-asteroid-briefly-threatened-earth.html

    A huge asteroid that was briefly feared to strike Earth now has
    a nearly 4% chance of smashing into the moon, according to new
    data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

    The asteroid, thought to be capable of leveling a city, set a
    new record in February for having the highest chance—3.1%—of
    hitting our home planet than scientists have ever measured.

    Earth's planetary defense community leapt into action and
    further observations quickly ruled out that the asteroid—called
    2024 YR4—will strike Earth on December 22, 2032.

    But the odds that it will instead crash into Earth's satellite
    have been steadily rising.

    . . .

    Ok ... this one is kinda large.

    IF it hits the moon it COULD fling-up all kinds
    of debris - some large but mostly small. As such
    the threat to the ground would be relatively small,
    but the threat to SATELLITES might be MUCH more.

    Does NOT take anything large to trash sats - or
    the ISS. A cloud of BB-sized bits flinging off
    the moon would SHRED sats - and debris from those
    would shred even MORE. Earth orbit could become
    totally unsafe for anything for a year or two,
    or even more.

    No comm sats, no spy sats, no weather sats, no
    StarLink - a BIG problem for modern society. The
    Hubble or potentially even Webb telescopes could
    be at notable risk.

    OTOH I am radio ham, we have shortwave for around the earth.
    No GPS?
    that will impact navigation in a big way!
    but I still do have a sextant :-)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextant
    There are plenty geostatic sattelites:
    https://en.kingofsat.tv/
    move your mouse over the icons at the top of that page to see the names of those sats
    I have a steerable dish to pick out some..
    Hams have their own sats too.
    So messages of destruction will make it around the globe, local news will echo it.

    As to survival, having a good multiband shortwave radio is a must.

    Space is huge, I do not expect the chances from some rocks from a moon impact to do a lot of harm..









    Bad case ... assume NO sat was safe for maybe
    a DECADE. How WOULD we fill in ? Tick tick ...
    time to figure it out is shrinking rapidly.

    OR, if we move quickly, we might deflect the
    thing with a nearby nuke. Wouldn't take much
    of a push - but the AMOUNT of push required
    increases daily. Russia especially has a big
    inventory of large nukes - but Musk's Falcon
    Heavy is probably the best delivery vehicle.
    Of interest, PUTIN has long been very keen
    on asteroid-deflection capabilities ...

    Oh, modern military issues ... without spy
    sats they'd become MUCH worse. Nobody could
    confirm anything about what their enemies
    are doing - and GUESSING always trends towards
    the paranoid side.



    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From c186282@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Fri Apr 4 23:43:00 2025
    XPost: alt.space, alt.survival

    On 4/4/25 2:39 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Thu, 3 Apr 2025 21:30:48 -0400) it happened c186282 <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    https://phys.org/news/2025-04-odds-asteroid-briefly-threatened-earth.html

    A huge asteroid that was briefly feared to strike Earth now has
    a nearly 4% chance of smashing into the moon, according to new
    data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

    The asteroid, thought to be capable of leveling a city, set a
    new record in February for having the highest chance—3.1%—of
    hitting our home planet than scientists have ever measured.

    Earth's planetary defense community leapt into action and
    further observations quickly ruled out that the asteroid—called
    2024 YR4—will strike Earth on December 22, 2032.

    But the odds that it will instead crash into Earth's satellite
    have been steadily rising.

    . . .

    Ok ... this one is kinda large.

    IF it hits the moon it COULD fling-up all kinds
    of debris - some large but mostly small. As such
    the threat to the ground would be relatively small,
    but the threat to SATELLITES might be MUCH more.

    Does NOT take anything large to trash sats - or
    the ISS. A cloud of BB-sized bits flinging off
    the moon would SHRED sats - and debris from those
    would shred even MORE. Earth orbit could become
    totally unsafe for anything for a year or two,
    or even more.

    No comm sats, no spy sats, no weather sats, no
    StarLink - a BIG problem for modern society. The
    Hubble or potentially even Webb telescopes could
    be at notable risk.

    OTOH I am radio ham, we have shortwave for around the earth.
    No GPS?
    that will impact navigation in a big way!
    but I still do have a sextant :-)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextant
    There are plenty geostatic sattelites:
    https://en.kingofsat.tv/
    move your mouse over the icons at the top of that page to see the names of those sats
    I have a steerable dish to pick out some..
    Hams have their own sats too.
    So messages of destruction will make it around the globe, local news will echo it.

    As to survival, having a good multiband shortwave radio is a must.

    Space is huge, I do not expect the chances from some rocks from a moon impact to do a lot of harm..


    Has/DOES happen though. If the Tungusta thing
    happened now It'd probably start WW3 before
    anybody figured it out.

    We've never seen the effects of big smack on
    the moon. Depending, it COULD send vast amounts
    of little specks into all the space around. As
    said, doesn't take MUCH to trash sats - and we
    now HEAVILY depend on them.

    Ham and such ARE good - but they're not gonna be
    a functional backup to sat systems. I say this
    actually looking at my AARL Handbook/tome on my
    table (wish it had more on pre-tube/valve tech
    just in case of social collapse).

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Sat Apr 5 05:22:58 2025
    XPost: alt.space, alt.survival

    On a sunny day (Fri, 4 Apr 2025 23:43:00 -0400) it happened c186282 <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    On 4/4/25 2:39 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Thu, 3 Apr 2025 21:30:48 -0400) it happened c186282
    <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    https://phys.org/news/2025-04-odds-asteroid-briefly-threatened-earth.html >>>
    A huge asteroid that was briefly feared to strike Earth now has
    a nearly 4% chance of smashing into the moon, according to new
    data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

    The asteroid, thought to be capable of leveling a city, set a
    new record in February for having the highest chance—3.1%—of
    hitting our home planet than scientists have ever measured.

    Earth's planetary defense community leapt into action and
    further observations quickly ruled out that the asteroid—called
    2024 YR4—will strike Earth on December 22, 2032.

    But the odds that it will instead crash into Earth's satellite
    have been steadily rising.

    . . .

    Ok ... this one is kinda large.

    IF it hits the moon it COULD fling-up all kinds
    of debris - some large but mostly small. As such
    the threat to the ground would be relatively small,
    but the threat to SATELLITES might be MUCH more.

    Does NOT take anything large to trash sats - or
    the ISS. A cloud of BB-sized bits flinging off
    the moon would SHRED sats - and debris from those
    would shred even MORE. Earth orbit could become
    totally unsafe for anything for a year or two,
    or even more.

    No comm sats, no spy sats, no weather sats, no
    StarLink - a BIG problem for modern society. The
    Hubble or potentially even Webb telescopes could
    be at notable risk.

    OTOH I am radio ham, we have shortwave for around the earth.
    No GPS?
    that will impact navigation in a big way!
    but I still do have a sextant :-)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextant
    There are plenty geostatic sattelites:
    https://en.kingofsat.tv/
    move your mouse over the icons at the top of that page to see the names of those sats
    I have a steerable dish to pick out some..
    Hams have their own sats too.
    So messages of destruction will make it around the globe, local news will echo it.

    As to survival, having a good multiband shortwave radio is a must.

    Space is huge, I do not expect the chances from some rocks from a moon impact to do a lot of harm..


    Has/DOES happen though. If the Tungusta thing
    happened now It'd probably start WW3 before
    anybody figured it out.

    Na, that thing exploded at about 10 km hight
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
    the geostatic satellites are at hundreds of km above the earth.
    Some SpaceX Starlink stuff may be damaged, but that is not that critical to infrastructure for most purposes.


    We've never seen the effects of big smack on
    the moon. Depending, it COULD send vast amounts
    of little specks into all the space around. As
    said, doesn't take MUCH to trash sats - and we
    now HEAVILY depend on them.

    High altitude nukes have killed sats, US killed
    Telstar got killed by a US high altitude nuke test
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar#In_service
    there was a song about Telstar too :-)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryrEPzsx1gQ

    Ham and such ARE good - but they're not gonna be
    a functional backup to sat systems. I say this
    actually looking at my AARL Handbook/tome on my
    table (wish it had more on pre-tube/valve tech
    just in case of social collapse).

    ARRL handbook, yes I had it in the tube day,
    started working in TV broadcasting in 1968 as technician,
    ran control rooms too for Eurovision etc..
    Much equipment in the old studios was tube based...
    The newer studios were all transistor, except fot the tubes in the monitors, cameras, film scanners ....
    Also designed my own high power shortwave SSB transmitter before that in school days,
    with tubes.. so no tube fear here.
    No transistor fear and no programming fear either..
    https://panteltje.nl/index1.html
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/
    check out the download link:
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
    Before b broadcasting I designed stuff for army and navy,
    After I left broadcasting in 1976 I travelled the world and worked on many things
    from mil to art to space.
    As to survival, come across some old tubes I build you a radio in no time ;-) No math needed, only a soldering iron and some wire ;-)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From c186282@21:1/5 to Jan Panteltje on Sat Apr 5 11:04:53 2025
    XPost: alt.space, alt.survival

    On 4/5/25 1:22 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Fri, 4 Apr 2025 23:43:00 -0400) it happened c186282 <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    On 4/4/25 2:39 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Thu, 3 Apr 2025 21:30:48 -0400) it happened c186282
    <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    https://phys.org/news/2025-04-odds-asteroid-briefly-threatened-earth.html >>>>
    A huge asteroid that was briefly feared to strike Earth now has
    a nearly 4% chance of smashing into the moon, according to new
    data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

    The asteroid, thought to be capable of leveling a city, set a
    new record in February for having the highest chance—3.1%—of
    hitting our home planet than scientists have ever measured.

    Earth's planetary defense community leapt into action and
    further observations quickly ruled out that the asteroid—called
    2024 YR4—will strike Earth on December 22, 2032.

    But the odds that it will instead crash into Earth's satellite
    have been steadily rising.

    . . .

    Ok ... this one is kinda large.

    IF it hits the moon it COULD fling-up all kinds
    of debris - some large but mostly small. As such
    the threat to the ground would be relatively small,
    but the threat to SATELLITES might be MUCH more.

    Does NOT take anything large to trash sats - or
    the ISS. A cloud of BB-sized bits flinging off
    the moon would SHRED sats - and debris from those
    would shred even MORE. Earth orbit could become
    totally unsafe for anything for a year or two,
    or even more.

    No comm sats, no spy sats, no weather sats, no
    StarLink - a BIG problem for modern society. The
    Hubble or potentially even Webb telescopes could
    be at notable risk.

    OTOH I am radio ham, we have shortwave for around the earth.
    No GPS?
    that will impact navigation in a big way!
    but I still do have a sextant :-)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextant
    There are plenty geostatic sattelites:
    https://en.kingofsat.tv/
    move your mouse over the icons at the top of that page to see the names of those sats
    I have a steerable dish to pick out some..
    Hams have their own sats too.
    So messages of destruction will make it around the globe, local news will echo it.

    As to survival, having a good multiband shortwave radio is a must.

    Space is huge, I do not expect the chances from some rocks from a moon impact to do a lot of harm..


    Has/DOES happen though. If the Tungusta thing
    happened now It'd probably start WW3 before
    anybody figured it out.

    Na, that thing exploded at about 10 km hight
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
    the geostatic satellites are at hundreds of km above the earth.
    Some SpaceX Starlink stuff may be damaged, but that is not that critical to infrastructure for most purposes.


    We've never seen the effects of big smack on
    the moon. Depending, it COULD send vast amounts
    of little specks into all the space around. As
    said, doesn't take MUCH to trash sats - and we
    now HEAVILY depend on them.

    High altitude nukes have killed sats, US killed
    Telstar got killed by a US high altitude nuke test
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar#In_service
    there was a song about Telstar too :-)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryrEPzsx1gQ

    Ham and such ARE good - but they're not gonna be
    a functional backup to sat systems. I say this
    actually looking at my AARL Handbook/tome on my
    table (wish it had more on pre-tube/valve tech
    just in case of social collapse).

    ARRL handbook, yes I had it in the tube day,
    started working in TV broadcasting in 1968 as technician,
    ran control rooms too for Eurovision etc..
    Much equipment in the old studios was tube based...
    The newer studios were all transistor, except fot the tubes in the monitors, cameras, film scanners ....
    Also designed my own high power shortwave SSB transmitter before that in school days,
    with tubes.. so no tube fear here.
    No transistor fear and no programming fear either..
    https://panteltje.nl/index1.html
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/
    check out the download link:
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
    Before b broadcasting I designed stuff for army and navy,
    After I left broadcasting in 1976 I travelled the world and worked on many things
    from mil to art to space.
    As to survival, come across some old tubes I build you a radio in no time ;-) No math needed, only a soldering iron and some wire ;-)


    Got the LC resonance equations memorized I presume -
    some people are good at that stuff :-)

    When I came along it was sort of the transition period
    between tubes and transistors - you'd find TVs and such
    that were sort of half and half. Tubes were still better
    for higher-frequency work, but transistors soon reached
    and went beyond in that department.

    Now, about the only place you see tubes is in high-end
    audio.

    Remember something a few years back about attempts to
    make cold-cathode tubes ... the cathode was micro-
    etched using optical masks similar to how you'd make
    microchips ... leaving ten zillion pointy little nits
    that, under voltage, would happily spew out a stream
    of electrons. No heater = runs cool & efficient and
    no burn-outs. Never heard what became of that work.
    Maybe not a big enough market ?

    My only coming-up project is a two tran FM transmitter
    to attach to my mail box. The plan is that an amorph
    solar cell charges some super-caps and, on triggering,
    the thing gives off a signal for a second or two until
    the caps run down, thus resetting the circuit. Plan
    to aim at the very top or bottom of the commercial
    FM band. It's trivial work, but keeps the brain going.
    How about coils wound on plastic soda straws ? Oh,
    and the whole deal needs to be kind of hidden from
    vandals and from making the mail carrier thinking the
    box is wired to attack.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jan Panteltje@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Sun Apr 6 03:28:37 2025
    XPost: alt.space, alt.survival

    On a sunny day (Sat, 5 Apr 2025 11:04:53 -0400) it happened c186282 <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    On 4/5/25 1:22 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Fri, 4 Apr 2025 23:43:00 -0400) it happened c186282
    <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    On 4/4/25 2:39 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
    On a sunny day (Thu, 3 Apr 2025 21:30:48 -0400) it happened c186282
    <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:

    https://phys.org/news/2025-04-odds-asteroid-briefly-threatened-earth.html >>>>>
    A huge asteroid that was briefly feared to strike Earth now has
    a nearly 4% chance of smashing into the moon, according to new
    data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

    The asteroid, thought to be capable of leveling a city, set a
    new record in February for having the highest chance—3.1%—of
    hitting our home planet than scientists have ever measured.

    Earth's planetary defense community leapt into action and
    further observations quickly ruled out that the asteroid—called
    2024 YR4—will strike Earth on December 22, 2032.

    But the odds that it will instead crash into Earth's satellite
    have been steadily rising.

    . . .

    Ok ... this one is kinda large.

    IF it hits the moon it COULD fling-up all kinds
    of debris - some large but mostly small. As such
    the threat to the ground would be relatively small,
    but the threat to SATELLITES might be MUCH more.

    Does NOT take anything large to trash sats - or
    the ISS. A cloud of BB-sized bits flinging off
    the moon would SHRED sats - and debris from those
    would shred even MORE. Earth orbit could become
    totally unsafe for anything for a year or two,
    or even more.

    No comm sats, no spy sats, no weather sats, no
    StarLink - a BIG problem for modern society. The
    Hubble or potentially even Webb telescopes could
    be at notable risk.

    OTOH I am radio ham, we have shortwave for around the earth.
    No GPS?
    that will impact navigation in a big way!
    but I still do have a sextant :-)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextant
    There are plenty geostatic sattelites:
    https://en.kingofsat.tv/
    move your mouse over the icons at the top of that page to see the names of those sats
    I have a steerable dish to pick out some..
    Hams have their own sats too.
    So messages of destruction will make it around the globe, local news will echo it.

    As to survival, having a good multiband shortwave radio is a must.

    Space is huge, I do not expect the chances from some rocks from a moon impact to do a lot of harm..


    Has/DOES happen though. If the Tungusta thing
    happened now It'd probably start WW3 before
    anybody figured it out.

    Na, that thing exploded at about 10 km hight
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
    the geostatic satellites are at hundreds of km above the earth.
    Some SpaceX Starlink stuff may be damaged, but that is not that critical to infrastructure for most purposes.


    We've never seen the effects of big smack on
    the moon. Depending, it COULD send vast amounts
    of little specks into all the space around. As
    said, doesn't take MUCH to trash sats - and we
    now HEAVILY depend on them.

    High altitude nukes have killed sats, US killed
    Telstar got killed by a US high altitude nuke test
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar#In_service
    there was a song about Telstar too :-)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryrEPzsx1gQ

    Ham and such ARE good - but they're not gonna be
    a functional backup to sat systems. I say this
    actually looking at my AARL Handbook/tome on my
    table (wish it had more on pre-tube/valve tech
    just in case of social collapse).

    ARRL handbook, yes I had it in the tube day,
    started working in TV broadcasting in 1968 as technician,
    ran control rooms too for Eurovision etc..
    Much equipment in the old studios was tube based...
    The newer studios were all transistor, except fot the tubes in the monitors, cameras, film scanners ....
    Also designed my own high power shortwave SSB transmitter before that in school days,
    with tubes.. so no tube fear here.
    No transistor fear and no programming fear either..
    https://panteltje.nl/index1.html
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/
    check out the download link:
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
    Before b broadcasting I designed stuff for army and navy,
    After I left broadcasting in 1976 I travelled the world and worked on many things
    from mil to art to space.
    As to survival, come across some old tubes I build you a radio in no time ;-)
    No math needed, only a soldering iron and some wire ;-)


    Got the LC resonance equations memorized I presume -
    some people are good at that stuff :-)

    Yes, and B = f0 / Q
    3 dB bandwith = resonant frequency divided by Q


    When I came along it was sort of the transition period
    between tubes and transistors - you'd find TVs and such
    that were sort of half and half. Tubes were still better
    for higher-frequency work, but transistors soon reached
    and went beyond in that department.

    I remember he first tranistors, indeed low frequency, we had Philips OC13 etc.. Soon the frequency went up
    At school we had an old electronics teacher, one guy asked:
    'Sir, what exactly is a complementary pair?'
    Teacher thought it was a sex joke and asked the guy to leave.
    It took the whole class to convince the teacher it was a legitimate question... In that school it was common knowledge only hobbyists passed the exams.
    Very high drop out rate.
    I had fun :-)
    I started with tubes DL92, AZ1, in the early fifties.
    What ever stuff I could find.
    Best books I ever did read about radio and TV were by Eugène Aisberg:
    https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/13761662.Eug_ne_Aisberg
    and that ARRL handbook much later :-)
    And one about NTSC television... forgot the name of that book.

    Useful were magazines like Elektuur (Elector) and Radio Electronica here. Electuur had a transistor TV , I used part of that schematic to rededign a very old tube BW TV (with round CRT) to
    an all transistor TV..
    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/scope_tv/index.html
    Although I even worked for Tectronics I still use my old Trio analog scope from 1979 or so:-)
    It is all very simple..


    Now, about the only place you see tubes is in high-end
    audio.

    Sure, in highschool I designed and build a tube amplifier for the school band gitarist liked the sound, asked for more later...


    Remember something a few years back about attempts to
    make cold-cathode tubes ... the cathode was micro-
    etched using optical masks similar to how you'd make
    microchips ... leaving ten zillion pointy little nits
    that, under voltage, would happily spew out a stream
    of electrons. No heater = runs cool & efficient and
    no burn-outs. Never heard what became of that work.
    Maybe not a big enough market ?

    That is new to me, probably transistors were cheaper and easier to make.


    My only coming-up project is a two tran FM transmitter
    to attach to my mail box. The plan is that an amorph
    solar cell charges some super-caps and, on triggering,
    the thing gives off a signal for a second or two until
    the caps run down, thus resetting the circuit. Plan
    to aim at the very top or bottom of the commercial
    FM band. It's trivial work, but keeps the brain going.
    How about coils wound on plastic soda straws ? Oh,
    and the whole deal needs to be kind of hidden from
    vandals and from making the mail carrier thinking the
    box is wired to attack.

    There are cheap modules for 433 MHz data transfer / remote control on ebay:
    ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=remote+control+module

    Hard to beat those prices!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)