William,
you have a good point there, that needs some discussion indeed.
Actually I do support the participation of radio amateurs in this kind of scientific effort. I find it very interesting and I am willing to spend some time and even money on it.
However, I am frequently quite frustrated because these projects are often not well documented. So me and many others waste a lot of time just by finding out the signal parameters, modulation, how to decode, etc. It is often difficult to find TLEs and up-to-date information about the project and the status of the satellite.
I think some of the project teams should pay more attention to provide as accurate as possible information and documentation to the amateur radio community. They have endless opportunities for that on the internet.
Cheers Edgar DF2MZ
Am 12.11.2011 12:32, schrieb William Leijenaar:
Hello AMSATs,
As we all know OSCAR is the abbreviatie of Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio. To my opinion the function of OSCAR satellites is to facilitate communication between amateur radio stations using amateur radio frequencies and/or do experiments on those radio frequencies.
Can someone tell me how it is possible that many of the newer small satellites get a license to use ham radio satellite frequencies for only broadcasting data ? Many of these satellite missions are even not ham related, and those satellites only have a broadcast (downlink) radio onboard. Is this nowadays seen as amateur radio communication ?
The word "Education" I read in many of the university CubeSat projects. Doing experiments on ham radio frequencies is like education, and I fully support this even when it is only available as a downlink at a CubeSat. When it comes to the education of building a satellite, with no ham related experiments, and where the amateur frequencies and the amateur community is used to collect only none ham payload data, I don't see this as a ham satellite. Then a 433MHz remote control toy-car should also be named a ham radio. We just ask one of those ISS astronauts to throw this toy-car out of the space station and we have another amateur satellite :o)
I just wonder where is the border between an OSCAR and a satellite that uses ham radio frequencies for downloading its (none ham) payload data ?
73 de PE1RAH, William Leijenaar _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb