Visiball

[oldbilbo]

I have one of these - a Kemp Visiball - secured as in the pic/reference, and my masthead tricolour is mounted on top of it. I accept it falls short of being an effective passive radar reflector but, like others, I am reluctant to discard it. The mast is down at present, so I'm musing what to do with/about it.

Ignore it and go do something useful? Remove it and send it off to eBay for a couple of beer tokens? Paint it a dayglo colour, which might just possibly be useful in a crowded anchorage, or if I forget which foreign pontoon I should return to after umpteen tapas bars....?

A virtual beer for the most interesting suggestion for recycling of the Visiball....

 

[sarabande]

if you fix it on top of your car, then any radar camera will be overwhelmed by the multiple echoes of the reflector and the car itself as they 'phase' out. This is surface wave correlation, and should have been covered in one of your conversion courses. In effect your car becomes invisible to radar. Honest ! Try it out on your next trip to Brissle.

The only issue I can forsee is that aperture fill time of the chirp phased array radar on the range profile may nullify the overlay pulses. But then, you have to live dangerously sometime.

 

[Porthandbuoy]

Stick it on the underside of your boat. As every schoolboy knows, sound travels faster in water than in air, so when your boat is 'pinged' by a submarine's sonar you will give a return like a supertanker. Just think how much safer you'll feel without having to worry about ending up like Drum

 

[duncanmack]

It's obvious.

Carefully cut the sides off.
Get 2 sticks connected by about 1 metre of 8mm line.
Persuade a scantily clad female crew member, preferably oriental, to do tricks (*) with the "visiball" and the sticks/line while in port.
Put a hat down for the donations to the drink fund.
Get another crew member to go buy the drink.
Sit in the cockpit and drink the drinks while shouting encouragement to the performer. You might even make enough for your mooring/insurance/running costs - depending on the physique/scanty clothing/skill of the artiste.
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.(*) Dunno what you were thinking, but it's called a Diabolo!

 

[oldbilbo]

I suspect I'm going to need a whole crate of V-beer before this is over....