If you barely work the FM birds then you don't have a lot of credibility criticizing them. ALL aspects of amateur radio have the occasional rude participant. Yes, there are times, especially weekends, when the FM birds are analogous to 50 people trying to get through a door at once. But most of the time it is possible to get in a couple of contacts with a little practice. Not everyone can afford the thousands of dollars needed for a computer-driven SSB satellite ground station. The FM birds allow those of us on a limited budget to experience the excitement of using our own budget limited equipment to make a contact via satellite. Hopefully, AMSAT and other entities will continue to make available FM satellites as well as more SSB satellites and APRS satellites, so everyone who wants to participate will have that opportunity. Steve AI9IN ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Walker via AMSAT-BB (amsat-bb@amsat.org)
I barely work the FM birds and it is clear that they are a waste of time and investment money, at least over North America. No different than 27.185Mhz. We have a repeater like that here in Toronto where there is no control. Hopefully, we have seen the last of the FM repeaters in the sky since this part of the hobby is partially out of control.