i8CVS Domenico wrote... The problem here with many new and young satellite operators is like to have many young sparrow that don't know how good is the flavour of wheat
Joe WB9SBD wrote
I still to this day fail to see how hard it is to twist a VFO knob.
Have we all become soo much appliance operators that we all have forgot to know how to turn a VFO knob to keep someone in tune?
OZ1MY wrote: Why not just be happy to get one more transponder for us to use ? ... It is interesting to note that there are far moreoperators on the FM transponder satellites than on the linear satellites in Low Earth Orbit.
...I think we should say thank you to our friends in SA for a new one.
I find it easy to on side with many of these and similar comments. I don't believe they are mutually exclusive. It is easy to agree to all these. And another BIG THANK YOU from EN19 too!
So rather than waiting for an expensive and probably impossible ride for an AMSAT built satellite LEO or otherwise, FM vs Linear Transponder, perhaps it is time for AMSAT UK, DL, NA et al to be proactive and DONATE a transponder and antennas to the next university CubeSat or Pico sat project. Something such as PE1RAH William Leijenaar's transponder board. A RFP to all those universities now in the planning stages could be sent, an international AMSAT review committee struck to evaluate the merits of those submissions and then finally an annual ( or more often ) donation of the hardware. And to heck with ITAR. If AMSAT NA is hamstrung then I authorize them to take my life membership and transfer the remaining unused portion to AMSAT DL, UK etc.
We buy, they ride and in the spirit of the "Delfi Model" we all win.
And then there is the Genso initiative to assist those universities in near-whole-earth-orbit data acquisition.
Wow.. Why wouldn't they buy into that.
I've stated it here before and I'll repeat it. I don't believe we will ever see another HEO. We amateurs need to connect with, mentor to and volunteer for cube sat and pico sat efforts that are being initiated at the university level. They have the funding, sweat equity and the rides.
And a final reminder, they don't need a ham licence to download telemetry for their science experiments on UHF. They really don't need us. We need them. UHF; we are the secondary user.
Well, actually one more final reminder. We cannot on one hand dumb everything down to an FM HT experience and on the other hand with the AO-40 model do CC-Rider, baud rates in excess of 9K6 etc. There is even a smaller installed base of equipment for those modes than the linear transponder SSB on UHF and VHF. So I don't buy into the argument that FM is the only way to go just because there are more handy talkies than SSB base stations. If that was valid then AO-40 with all it's exotic modes should never have got off the drawing board.
What would y'all do with a dozen FO-29's or VO-52's or a dozen DO-64's with a working voice transponder or even a dozen SO-67's? They are being planned and built right now all around that world in universities and they will be flying with or without us. We can standby and wait. Then complain after they are launched. Or you can check out what your local university is doing right now and get involved. They all need to set up and learn how to run a ground station and that is an expertise you have and they need. You can train them to get their licences so they can do their command and control. There are lots of ways to contribute other than writing a chegue.
We have a political saying up here "If you didn't vote, you have no business complaining about your government". There is an analogy for amateur radio.
Stepping off the soap box...
73, Alan VE4YZ EN19kv AMSAT LM 2352 http://www.wincube.ca