Since we are on the topic of a GEO sat. Am I the only one the questions the point of a GEO bird from a ham radio perspective? No doppler, no propagation, no antenna pointing, just set up your station and have comms with anyone in the footprint.
To me it feels like the internet at that point. I see how this could be a great thing for emergency communications, but not so much for amateur ‘sport’.
I am curious if they would accept this for amateur radio awards like DXCC and VUCC?
One segment of Amateur Radio is communications for the sport of communications. Just one segment. It is easy to believe that the part of Amateur Radio that you participate in is "Ham Radio". Some folks even go as far as asserting that hams who work otherwise are not "real Hams" - don't be those people.
People who use geostationary satellites so far are doing quite a lot of work simply to get on the air. You can't buy a 10 GHz rig at Gigaparts. Thisis laudable on its own and meritorious of awards. It won't always be that way, but even when you can buy a geostationary rig online, you will be able to use it for public service communications, which have their own merit, and will be able to experiment with new protocols and codecs. This sort of work has again put hams at the forefront of wireless where we were behind for 50 years. For example, nobody in industry designs wireless anything without first implementing it in Gnu Radio.
I think for a long time just being able to access a geostationary satellite and talk to another ham will be worth some points. Just as running a GOTA station or getting in the press gets you some field day points. I don't think you will be able to "win" a contest with that mode alone for very long after the first time someone does it.
Thanks
Bruce