Building Amateur satellites at the Naval Academy using simple AX.25 TNC's as command/control/telemetry using almost off the shelf APRS devices costing maybe $300, it is frustrating to me to see *dozens* of other high schools and universities all wanting to build a cubesat but with most of them having great ideas but little in the way of actual talent to make a radio work. They all want to put Raspberry pies or much much bigger processors on board and want the power of their smart phones on board, but fail to be able to actually build anything that works. So they just buy $5000 xcvrs, $3000 batteries (instead of super reliable and safe NiCd's for $50.
And the failure rate of these that actually make it to orbit is quite high! Not counting all the hardware that gets burned up by students having little clue what they are doing during testing and integration. It’s a crying shame to see all this effort thrown away. What? Maybe 1% of these projects have a HAM mentor to encourage a Ham experiment on board. And most such mentors are powerless to lead the students toward something simpler that works as opposed to the stuffing of the most complex CPUs all into the tiny cubesat and wondering why it "doesn’t work" reliably once they unplug it from all their USB cables....
So I endorese any effort to push our expertise out to wherever we can find satellite interest in schools and try to help them to success.
But then, I am a modern fossil. Still clinging to robust NiCd's, 1200, and 9600 baud TNC's, SSTV and plain old ham comms. And yes, with 8 successful ham transponders over 18 years, I DID fail on the ax25 of PSAT2 with a stupid mistake, though the SSTV and PSK31 UHF side still works perfectly with plenty of power.
Anyway, standby for PSAT3 (a dupe of PSAT2 but without 5 volts on the 4vmax Xcvr!) and then this fossil is out of here by June.
Bob, WB4APR
-----Original Message----- Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Google Summer of Code - mentorship application from Open Research Institute
Welcome! Great questions.
Participation in academia has a long history in amateur radio. From significant atmospheric research accomplished with amateur collaboration in the 1920s to enormous contributions from amateurs in software defined radio, today.
There are a large number of university teams doing spacecraft. More interaction at earlier stages with the teams wanting to authentically include amateur radio will improve those payloads. That directly benefits the amateur service.
There’s a large number of academic payloads with very poorly thought out ground systems. Lots of opportunities there! Directly benefits all of us if using a payload is not unnecessarily challenging, frustrating, or ineffective.
Advanced digital microwave work is a gold mine of projects and possibilities. FPGA design, power amplifiers, feed design, user interface, accessibility design, cognitive radio, machine learning, genetic algorithms to speed decoding... and lots more.
Why should proprietary interests have all the fruits of academic labor, and have all the fun? Amateur radio has a unique position in the regulatory landscape and is an excellent partner for academia. I believe we should take full advantage of it whenever we can. GSoC is a good match.
It helps us by (potentially) producing modern work for amateur satellites.
I say potentially because some students will fail. That is the nature of any creative endeavor. We can all learn from failures too. I argue that there is only upside for us in participation.
Thank you,
Michelle W5NYV