Honestly, I'm completely disgusted with amsat-bb. Is anyone having any fun at all out there? You people seem resolutely determined to complain about the current state of amateur satellites, without provocation, and with no idea of how fix anything. Or even any idea how to have fun using what few satellites we do have. If someone were interested in getting into satellite operation on VO-52 or even AO-51, I'd actively _discourage_ them from joining this cesspool of negativity.
And less the AMSAT-NA think I'm giving them a pass, what the hell is up with you people? The store, down for months. Consistently out of date info on the website. Promises that updates will be made via the Amsat Journal or at conferences. EARTH TO AMSAT BOARD: THIS IS THE AGE OF THE INTERNET. It isn't good enough to publish summary information on paper a couple of times a year. People are frustrated because to all appearances, you aren't being honest with them, and you certainly aren't being timely.
I even tried joining the namaste-dev list to combat the lack of any serious, technically relevant development going on, to see if a skilled programmer like myself could reasonably contribute anything to the ongoing efforts. I lurked for a month or two, and what I observed did not thrill me with confidence. I see a group mired in requirements negotiation, bickering, and in the last few weeks, completely imploding.
Bleh.
Okay, that's enough complaining. Here is some food for thought:
1. It seems to me that the groundstation development is completely turned on its head. The goal is to create a ground station design which is both a) reasonably inexpensive and b) reproducible enough to be constructed by large numbers of hams. So, begin there by actually (and this will seem really radical) DESIGNING AND BUILDING SOME HARDWARE. It seems to me that the majority of the design is actually software. Software is difficult to design, but has a number of other offsetting qualities. It's easy to modify and cheap to redistribute, so it makes some sense to pursue it later. Additionally, it allows the hardware design to be picked up and extended by others with parallel interest, gaining momentum from them. Perhaps the TAPR software defined radio platform with suitable up/down converters is a good place to start. Or GNU radio. So, let's get those into the hands of several hundred hams, and start working. Volunteers don't work well in the abstract in my experience, so let's make the development process as concrete as possible to get them involved. Let's work to get costs down. Let's get basic software freely available under open source. Leverage work from VHF, microwave and packet groups. If we can't do everything, then let's at least do something.
2. Milestones. We need tangible milestones. It's far easier to find the status of Kiwisat (very cool, incidently) than it is for Eagle. In part this is because the kiwisat team seems to take their contributors seriously, and likes to keep them informed to keep morale high and to show progress. What milestones have been passed in the Eagle design and construction? Can anyone find that out without knowing somebody personally?
3. We've received notice from AMSAT-DL that they don't have enough money to launch P3E. Well, how much do they need? How much are they short? If they are off by 20%, or even 50%, then I suspect fundraising could conceivably close that gap. If they are off by 80%, then I think we have to honestly admit that until competition makes boosts to HEO more economical, we've been priced out of the game for now. That'd be a tough thing to swallow, but pretending that we are going to have launch opportunities which do not exist isn't improving anyone's morale, especially as years go by and nothing gets done.
4. AMSAT needs to find some good volunteers, and importantly, it needs to reject some bad volunteers. Not everyone who offers to help is helping. On the other hand, not all criticism is complaining.
Okay, I'm late for my day job. I haven't been licensed for 40 years, so I still have one.
Mark KF6KYI