On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 23:32:47 -0400, Doug Vetter wrote:

The ability of a transponder to handle a high reply rate will become more
important as more aircraft are equipped with systems such as TCAS and
Skywatch that actively interrogate targets much in the same way ground
facilities do.

Let's assume that a [mode c] transponder is being interrogated at a rate
higher than that at which it can respond. Does this matter? If the
transponder is responding as quickly as it can (let's pick a hypothetic
10/second), while it is receiving [a hypothetic] 20 interrogations/second,
won't each interrogator still see the 10 responses per second and
therefore "see" responses to its own interrogations?

Or is there some unique mapping from a specific interrogation to the
specific reply?

- Andrew