On Thursday, June 8, 2017 at 7:18:50 AM UTC+10, Craig Markwardt wrote:
I would like to add something, which I had not fully appreciated
until now.

It has to do with how the effective reflectivity of the high gain
antenna was determined, but it has everything to do with the
"onset" of the anomaly. As we know, there was some a priori
information about the high gain antenna optical properties, but
there was also the expectation of some degradation.

Anderson et al (2002) demonstrate how this was done. In footnote
[91], they note that based on pre-launch optical data, the
expected "K0" factor was 1.71. "K" is the effective
reflective+emissive forcing factor as shown in their equation
(25).

However, it was understood that the radiative properties of the
dish could change. Therefore, the "K" factor was treated as a
"solve-for" parameter. That is, based on a set of data, *assume*
the non-gravitational accelerations are due to solar radiation
pressure only, and solve for "K." This is stated explicitly in
the sentence below Anderson et al's equation (26).

Namely, that the non-gravitational acceleration reported in
equation (26) near Jupiter of 70 +/- 3.5 x 10^{-8} cm/s2, is set
equal to the solar radiation pressure formula in equation (25),
resulting in K = 1.77. Note that this is different than the
pre-launch value, K0=1.71.

Thus, there is an *assumption* that no other non-gravitational
forces are acting at 5AU. None from gas leaks. None from
emission from compartments. None from RTG emission. None from
any "anomaly."

Any anomaly was essentially zeroed out by this analysis
technique. It's not a surprise that the "anomaly" in Anderson's
Figures 6 & 7 are nearly zero near 5AU. That's because the
anomaly was set to zero at 5 AU explicitly in the analysis.

The "onset" in those figures is an artifact of the way the
analysis was done. The assumption made was not necessarily
correct. We *know* there was additional non-gravitational
acceleration due to the electronic compartments. This was not
accounted for. Thus, we cannot rely upon the results in
Anderson's Figure 6 or 7, since they assumed what you are now
claiming to discover.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/mskeon/pioneer4.html
demonstrates that I'm not "claiming to discover" any such thing.
But you've just shot yourself in the foot by acknowledging the
existence of an onset.

Analysts involved in describing the Pioneer anomaly set the zero
mark for the onset at around 5 AU, which gave a positive anomaly
for all radii beyond that point. If zero was set at i.e. 20 AU
the anomaly would be negative at lesser radii, and that would
throw your thermal solution out the window. Your challenge would
then be to explain a **negative** anomaly where Pioneer is
anomalously accelerated away from the sun. Or if the zero mark
was set at 1 AU the anomaly would increase by 1.1e-6 m/s^2 to
1.10874e-6 m/s^2. But wherever the zero mark is set the same
anomaly is still present.

The reason 5 AU was chosen as zero is because it gave the best
fit according to current theory.

The mismatch between my theory and current theory is always
exactly the same regardless of where the zero mark is set.

-----

Max Keon