An inquiry during my EchoLink presentation last night ...
"Clint, we know the orbit of a specific satellite, we know its projected footprint, and we know its expected time over that footprint. Now if we had “X” amount of ham stations, RF equipped to talk with this satellite, and these hams were also equipped to communicate via VOIP EchoLink or IRLP and enough of these stations were lined up around the world within the orbital path, we would have continuous 24 hour, 7 day a week coverage around the world with this bird.
"The EchoLink or IRLP stations would all be tied together via connection to a main conference server such as *SCARS*. This would mean that anyone worldwide could access the satellite day or night by transmitting and listening to the earth station that was in the footprint at that particular time.
"I would see some things needing to be understood by the users, such as timing in regards to internet latency, repeater and or link delays, and the need to understand a pause would be necessary before transmitting, etc. .... "
I have thought of this on a much smaller scale ... I welcome your comments. I do not want to completely discourage this gentleman from "thinking globally" (grin).
Clint Bradford