View allAll Photos Tagged Compact,
What might look like an abstract artwork is actually a novel antenna, small enough for a minisatellite, to track global ship traffic from orbit.
Commercial vessels are mandated to transmit Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals, which are used to track maritime traffic – the oceangoing equivalent of air traffic control. The system relies on VHF radio signals with a horizontal range of just 40 nautical miles (74 km), useful within coastal zones and on a ship-to-ship basis, but leaving open ocean traffic largely uncovered.
However, in 2010 ESA fitted an experimental antenna to Europe’s Columbus module of the International Space Station, demonstrating for the first time that AIS signals could also be detected from up in orbit, opening up the prospect of global ship tracking from space.
“Based on our testing, this new prototype designs offers a four-fold increase in ship detection performance,” explains ESA antenna specialist Nelson Fonseca, overseeing the project.
“The AIS detection system on Columbus employs a low-gain ‘whip’ antenna, receiving signals within a very broad beam, with corresponding potential for signal overlap and interference.
“This antenna design combines higher-gain with a more reduced footprint, allowing more of a focus on regions of highest interest, and can also discriminate between polarisations, increasing the likelihood of detection for any individual AIS signal within the antenna field of view.”
In addition, clever engineering has shrunk the overall antenna size to a size where up to five could be hosted on a single cubic-metre minisatellite.
“Despite its name, VHF is quite a low wavelength in space terms, implying a bulky antenna of about 1 m across and half-a-metre thick to operate ideally at that frequency,” Nelson adds.
“But the patterned square-shaped structure on the underlying face of our antenna changes the signal behaviour, enabling us to shrink the design to 50 cm width and 3 cm thickness – making it suitable for hosting on a smaller platform.”
The antenna was developed through ESA’s ARTES Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems – Advanced Technology programme with Italian companies CGS as prime contractor and MVG as subcontractor in charge of the electrical design.
“CGS and MVG are highly interested in moving forward with the optimisation and environmental qualification of this outstanding antenna element,” explains Andrea Di Cintio, managing the project at CGS. “The next step will be to identify a specific mission and then optimise the design and qualification accordingly.”
“Significant reduction of antenna dimensions and weight without compromising electrical performance was challenging,” adds Andrea Giacomini, lead antenna designer at MVG. “It required a radical change in the design and validation approach. We are proud to have been involved.”
Credit: ESA–G. Porter, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
New constructions for the wall - Compact St Jude's Dungeness - Wood, nails, 13 years of gloss paint, lichen, stabilizer and varnish
1998 BMW 316i Compact.
Previously registered G2 OTL.
Subsequently re-registered S255 SBJ in June 2025.
Last (extended) MoT test expired in November 2020 (SORN).
No previous keepers.
Car: BMW 316i Compact.
Year of manufacture: 1999.
Date of first registration in the UK: 20th May 1999.
Place of registration: Chelmsford.
Date of last MOT: 7th April 2021.
Mileage at last MOT: 100,621.
Last change of keeper: 9th August 2020
Date taken: 3rd June 2021.
Album: Carspotting 2021
A very basic Compact. Top spotting points if you see one of these now.
Plate comes back to a Piaggio T5 (a scooter?)
My first pass at the building was only three stories, then I added an additional three. If I had to fit the building in a more compact space or if looked out of place in a layout, I could go back to three.
This 1 3/8 inch figure is the DC Comics character The Flash as seen in the game HeroClix. The red and yellow streaks behind him are actually tissue paper.
I believe this is the first toy photo I've posted to Flickr that was lit by my camera's flash. I typically use lamps, flashlights, LEDs, etc.
This image is straight out of the camera: no tweaking, no color processing, no cropping, no nothing.
Submitted to the Flickr group 7 Days of Shooting.
The best words to describe HK's cityscape.
Recently fall in love with the skyscrapers and cityscape, I spent few weekends on wandering around Central to Wan Chai. Look up and look for sth fun!! :)
The Foxtrot fighter is a modified GARC viper. She's equipped with 2 short-range ballistic guns and 4 low-frequency phase cannons for shield dampening. Though she's low on firepower, she makes up for it with sheer speed. All this coupled with the ability to compact into a small cargo bay makes her a bounty hunter's best friend.
This has got to be my absolute favorite out of all the fighters I have built for the 14x14x6 starfighter challenge because it's just so fun to convert, and it's pretty dang swooshable too.
I initially wanted to have a few small cars that would fit into an autorack, similar to the Vert-A-Pac. The train car didn't work out, but the regular cars did. I will now use them for my LUG's city layout.
My prototypes for the 4 hood's i've designed so far.
The two for CV 21mm and CV 25mm are still going through testing at the moment, so aren't yet on sale.
As usually, this Easter was an opportunity to take a walk around the countryside. This time, with my father, and using slightly different cameras. The weather was (evidently) nice, so we took roads I hadn't been to for quite some time. Nice!
Taken with Nikon AF240SV, a plastic compact film camera, with its 28mm lens, on a roll of Kodak Color+ 200 film. Scanned with Plustek OpticFilm 8100 film scanner.
From where I sit at this moment, Orkney seems so remote. It's easy to forget that it sits just off John o' Groats and was a bit of Scotland nibbled away and submerged at the end of the Last Glacial Period. Prior to that, the lowered sea levels left Doggerland high and dry — a convenient stepping stone for humans to repopulate Britain from the rest of Europe. Yes, I've been to the very north of the archipelago, to North Ronaldsay. Today I'm away to South Ronaldsay — ironically juxtaposed at opposite ends from its northern namesake. This won't take me to Orkney's most southerly isle, Stroma, which to be honest has less water between it and Scotland that it has between itself and the rest of Orkney.
Here's a reminder of how compact these islands are. This is the northern tip of Glimps Holm looking back across Lamb Holm to Mainland. By now I've crossed two of the causeways constructed as navigation barriers in WWII. There are what appears to be military installations, there on the cliffs of Lamb Holm. In the middleground lie relics of the block ships sunk here early in WWI. I think this was the SS Numidian, an almost 5000 ton steel hulled steamer scuttled here on 30 December 1914. She was sunk in the company of SS Aorangi, SS Thames and SS Minieh with, I think, Numidian in the shallow water near this spot. I could be wrong. If you need a better answer there's a kind of trainspotters' guide to the wrecks of Scapa Flow.
Orkney is so user-friendly. It's a small place, compact, packed to the gunwales with history; so much that with sea level rise its, Plimsoll line is in peril of disappearing beneath the waves. Getting about is quick and easy; all that and it has a village named Twatt.
Golf 1
Despite several commendable attempts, Volkswagen was unable to come up with a true replacement for the highly popular Beetle at the end of the '60s.
That changed with the arrival of the Golf in June 1974. This compact, medium-size model, designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, broke with the Volkswagen tradition of an air-cooled rear-engine. It was replaced with a transversal water cooled four-cylinder engine and FWD. Similar to the Beetle, its forerunner, the Golf also became an example for the competition.
This was even more the case with the arrival of the GTI in June 1976. With its 1.600 cc engine and Bosch K-Jetronic injection the latter developed 110 bhp, and for its time, produced breakneck performances, with among others a top speed of 182 km/h.
Two months later Volkswagen brought another revolution with the Golf Diesel : that of the small, high revving diesel engine. It would be years before the competition would be able to come up with a satisfactory answer.
1.093 cc
4 In-line
50 hp @ 6.000 rpm
Vmax : 140 km/h
In the Spotlight : Volkswagen Milestones
29/01/2021 - 28/03/2021
Autoworld
Brussels - Belgium
February 2021
If there’s one company in Australia with heaps of dino compactors, that company will be Suez, or SITA as I wish they were still known. Maybe in the past the company had more dino work on a national scale, but the high majority is now subject to their Sydney operations, with most of their bulk bin trucks indeed dino roll-offs. I’m sure the company has a good couple hundred open top containers, compactor containers and integrated units in Sydney, a lot of which appear to be young or freshened up. However, a few years ago I came across one of their older pieces of equipment outside their Wetherill Park transfer station, just sitting on the road unattended while its transporter was somewhere else. I love seeing a compactor just sitting on the road out from a dock, especially at night in the Sydney CBD haha It’s not often you would find a compactor of this capacity being used for garbage, so I think it’s safe to say this is a dry waste container or more likely one for paper and cardboard. You can tell this one is an oldie, with very faded paint and signage, plenty of scratches and a decent amount of rust. You can see the front of the container has been punched inwards... a result of the many times this steel box has been pushed into its resting position by the bail hook and frame. I reckon the “No Parking Day Or Night” signs should feature an additional “Offending Vehicles Will Be Towed” - not hard to do with the truck!
Instructions for my custom models for the Death Star Escape & Compactor are now ready. You can buy downloads on my website
Olympus µ[mju:] Panorama
Kodak T-max 100
On tumblr: theatreofthemundane.tumblr.com
On Instagram: lemonhats
Hanimex Vef Compact. Objectif Hanimar 20mm f/4 Wide Angle. Petit bouton pour 3 ouvertures f/11, f/6.3, f/4. Film 110 vitesse 1/125. Année 1977.
37688 thrashes through Newton Abbot station with the 5Z41 09.00 Laira - Crewe HS stock move returning the unused Locomotive Services Ltd coaches. They had been sent to Laira following the short temporary withdrawal of most of the GWR IET sets at the beginning of May. I would have preferred a more scenic location with the superb sunshine but work dictated otherwise. Luckily I was working in Newton Abbot so grabbed this shot with my compact on my tea break.
Why cant these camera manufacturer's produce a Owners Manual that not only names the buttons, levers & dials but actually tells you what each of them does and why you would want to use them in the first place, some of us are NOT techies or Rocket Scientists.
This was the Agfa of salvation, the one that would keep the brand afloat as a camera maker. Presented in 1980, it was the stubborn Germanic answer to the Japanese tsunami that killed the German camera industry in the 60’s and 70’s. This was a moment of hope for AGFA, a return with a very interesting camera, where the attention to the design was surprising. The styling is very pleasant, a very small and original shape created by Schlagheck design of Munich. It faithfully follows the Bauhaus credo, from follows function, but the result here is an original and pretty camera. The master stroke is the sliding On/Off switch that covers the camera’s viewfinder. Slide it and the camera comes alive, the lens cover opens and the Solinar pops out, very neat. All this done electrically, something that would become the norm up to the present days. The lens was brand new, but it was another variation of the old Solinar, AGFA’s version of the Tessar. Here we have a rather surprising 39 mm /2.8 lens. I believe it to be a 40 mm lens, they chose the 39 mm to clearly send the message that this lens wasn’t the old Solitar 40/ 2.8 of the Optimas of old. The big splash was the electric motor responsible for popping out the lens and wind the film at a speedy 2fps. This looked like a cracking little camera destined for fame and success. Sadly, it was not to be.
It is easier to find a person born in the 19th century and breathing than to find an Agfa Compact in working condition. This lack of reliability eventually killed the camera and AGFA as camera maker in 1983. It seems underdeveloped, that scale focusing is out of pace with the rest of the camera, as is the viewfinder devoid of any sort of info, just a red lamp for flash turn on. While the manually wound previous Optima series had an automatic loading of the film, with this one you get a motor but you have to put the film tip in the reel’s slot. The flash is just like the Olympus XA, Canon MC or Minolta AF-C, a separate unit that connects to the left side of the camera. There is provision for a cable release, but oddly no self-timer. The electric motor emits a noise as If all the gears were about to break when the camera is switched on. Film winding is not exactly silent either, but not remotely comparable to the Canon ML
The camera’s Bauhaus design might be impressive, beautiful, functional, daring, but the Konica C35 AF already existed and had what people really needed, autofocus, integrated flash. No electric motor, a very dull design, but a coherent concept. Still, this little AGFA is very engaging, but I am not very sure that it works well, fingers crossed for the Tmax 100!
Georgia Strait from Linley Valley - Canon Z135 P&S 35mm Compact with 24-year old Expired (expired 1998) Kodak ISO 100 Gold Film - Photographer Russell McNeil PhD (Physics) lives on Vancouver Island, where he works as a writer.
I will be using this camera in week 325 of my 52 film cameras in 52 weeks project:
www.flickr.com/photos/tony_kemplen/collections/72157623113584240