This thread so reminds me of the past pleas for more mode B birds to replace AO-10 and AO-13. The AMSAT board response was that the VHF and UHF bands were getting noisy, illegal VHF and legal UHF interlopers were showing up and for the membership to embrace microwaves and build S band and L band stations.
Well I am one who has such a station and while I would love certainly to see mode B, come back, I am also fully equipped to excercise some S and L band experiments.
I can understand that many households are polluted with 2.4 GHz toys, mine is. My solution will be to pull the plug on that stuff during operation and to utilize a medium size dish for the downlink (Note: those grid panels can't discriminate as well as a bigger dish, and secondly the IC-970 noise blanker works on some types of S band ISM interference).
Please someone tell me that we can work L and S band modes with HEO and linear transponders, I would become so much more interested in the hobby!