I also will miss Bob. He was very gracious and encouraged me as a ham op, in a graduate researcher role at The George Washington University Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory, to take my early bench experiments and apply to build flight hardware for a space mission. He educated me on how his US Naval Academy Parkinson SmallSats were made, and I am grateful he agreed to support me in discussion with my senior faculty and other organizations, and that his institution agreed to give me an opportunity to fly the four channel Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster subsystem on the 2015 BRICSAT-P 1.5U Cubesat mission, which to no small degree started with discussions with him on "if" it could be done with no prior experience.
I learnt that you don't need fancy computing power to do things on SmallSats, and that even in the classroom one can efficiently demo the required ADCS components and figure out how the system would perform "up there", and I am happy to say it did.
I also was amazed about his success in "radio shack" type flight hardware obviously from an earlier era of technology, and his work in space-space-ground comms relay using APRS, and making calculations using integer math.
RIP, WB4APRS de Samudra N3RDX.
-----Original Message----- From: Joseph B. Fitzgerald jfitzgerald@alum.wpi.edu Sent: Wednesday, February 9, 2022 7:58 AM To: mail@mike-rupprecht.de; amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: [AMSAT-BB] Re: RIP WB4APR
Yes we sure will miss him ... he was such a force of nature! I was fortunate to be invited to help on the RAFT project. It was such a joy having a circuit board I worked on launch into orbit!
de KM1P Joe
________________________________________ From: mail@mike-rupprecht.de mail@mike-rupprecht.de Sent: Wednesday, February 9, 2022 5:43 AM To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: [AMSAT-BB] RIP WB4APR
It was with sadness that I learned the news of Bob's passing. He was my mentor (as was Colin, VK5HI) and taught me many things about satellites. There were times when we were in daily contact. Besides APRS, he left us many interesting satellite projects (PCSAT, PSAT, RAFT, MARS, SAPPHIRE, QIKOM...). I remember a great time when Henk, PA3GUO and I actively supported the ANDE mission. I thank Bob for his confidence in making me the command station of PCSAT and PSAT. My sympathies go out to his family. Thank you for your life's work for Amateur Radio, Bob. Rest in peace.
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