The AMSAT conference was very refreshing.
When I listen to the speakers, it often inspires me to day dream of neat ideas just for fun. Here are a few that got me thinking:
See the WEB page: http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/amsat-ideas.html
1) AMSAT $15 Student Receiver Kit. Rick Hambly proposed some kind of cheap kit for kids to build as student outreach. I suggested a simple up converter to upconvert 145.800 Space Station downlink to 462.5625 MHz for the FRS radios that the kids already have. I'm sure we could do this for really cheap since the kids already have the radio... A little device that wraps around the FRS antenna and has its own 19" antenna. See pictures on the WEB page above.
2) Golf Ball Fundraiser: A few years ago, there was a golf ball company willing to pay 100's of thousands to get a golf ball into space as an AD campaign. We all know the similar SWATCH project was soundly killed by the amateur community because it was in direct violation of the rules. But, such use of someone else's money to BUILD a satellite *can* be done if it is done within the rules. So here is my design challenge to the amateur commuunity for a golf ball 10m to 2m linear satellite transponder for MULTI-USER PSK-31. See:
3) The big-ear "S"band dish for local operations. I posted this before and it is simply using a 1/4th quadrant of an old "C" band TV dish as a nice gain antenna. In fact, save this for all future AMSAT EAGLE microwave links. These dishes are good to Ku band and using only 1/4th of them is much more manageable and easier to mount. And you only lose 12 dB from the 38 dB gain of a full sized one. Thats a nice 26 dB gain antenna that people are throwing away. Oh, and if you find a big dish that is intact, then you get four of these Quardrant antennas for one. And disassembling it into quadrants makes it easier to drag home anyway...
Anyway, just some fun thoughts...
de Wb4APR, Bob