I want to offer 'hearty congratulations' to the BOD for the courageous decisions made at the recent Space Symposium. I can think of no headline more appropriate and welcome for this organization than the declaration, "We're going back to space".
Perhaps this decision to move forward with what we can do will also be what was needed to get the manufacturers to quit sitting on their hands and INNOVATE!
How many threads have been spawned on this BB by someone asking the question "what handheld should I buy to use AO-51"..?
The fact that the pat answer is that there aren't any - you need to check eBay for a 20 year-old model speaks pitifully of the ham radio marketplace in the 21st century.
Given the nature of LEO, portable operations are very common and going forward, will be even more so. Who among us wouldn't love a mobile sized transceiver that sported true simultaneous dual-band (VHF/UHF) operation and a continuously tunable VFO on FM in a 'satellite operation mode'?
What would it be worth if that radio also could record all pass data - and had a USB port that supported a memory stick so that everything received during a pass could stored on it for offline extraction and study later when you're back in the shack. It wouldn't even require an internal TNC to download telemetry data - the audio file could simply be played back (offline) on a PC and the telemetry decoded there.
There are bound to be hundreds of similar ideas and dreams of new gear, antennas, and interesting things to do at LEO - let's populate the BB with these sorts of things and look forward, not back.
I'm more than ready to turn to a new chapter and get back to shaping the future of ham radio in space.
Aren't you?
73 de Jeff, KE9V AMSAT-NA 28350