Ed, You're partially right in my case, I don't have first hand experience on an HEO but I wouldn't call myself clueless about what it's like. I've spent many a happy evening researching in books and surfing the web reading about the glory days of AO-40 and some info on AO-13 as well. I'm slowly but surely trying to accquire everything I will need for P3E. It's a slow process on my budget but I'm getting there. No one could possibly want to see it launched and to succeed anymore than I do. All that being said, I like the FM sats, I think they are fun and that they are a challenge. I don't like seeing them being criticized here and really don't understand why it has to happen. I've joked about this before but sooner or later, there will be a model of AO-51 available, if some people don't like FM sats, they should get one and throw darts at it! ;-) lol As far as the next HEO surviving I will say this about AO-40, I wasn't a member of AMSAT back then but from all my research and reading I've come to the conclusion that AMSAT made a serious error in judgement in building such a big complex satellite and "putting all their eggs in one basket" so to speak. Seems like we are still reeling somewhat from it's loss, even to this day. The money and time might have been better spent on a couple of smaller less complex HEO birds or one HEO and one LEO along the lines os of AO-7. Of course hindsight is 20-20 isn't it? 73, Michael, W4HIJ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Edward Cole" kl7uw@acsalaska.net To: "Dave Guimont" dguimon1@san.rr.com; la2qaa@amsat.org Cc: amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:05 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Organised Chaos.
Dave,
It is obvious that there is a whole generation of Leo-FM sat users that are clueless of what ham radio on a Heo linear-tranponder is like. Although it must be harder than a cell phone since so many cannot seem to figure out how to operate on the Leos...I would say it is not "much" harder than using the local repeater.
I offer an analogy: Compare all the ham radio contacts that are done on HF with the same number of folks trying to talk thru a single FM repeater! First it cannot be done; second the attempt results in total chaos with "big fish" eating the little fishes!
I am waiting for the next Heo and hoping it survives better than the last one.
73 Ed - KL7UW