It isn't just LOTW price shock, it is also paper QSL price shock, as the price for using QSLs for a VUCC award or endorsement is outrageous.
$40 or so for a basic 100 grid satellite VUCC? And we want to get new hams interested in the grid hunt?
73s John AA5JG
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruce Robertson" ve9qrp@gmail.com To: "AMSAT-BB" amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 2:58 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: AMAST WAS and VUCC
On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:21 AM, wa4hfn@comcast.net wrote:
OK everyone in favor of supporting AMSAT having a W.A.S and a VUCC lets contact AMSAT with the request.I should have an effective start date WA4HFN Damon
I would be interested first in hearing what Bruce, KK5DO, thinks of this idea, since he has the experience in both ARRL and AMSAT awards.
My initial concern is that this idea arrived in response to the LOTW price schedule, which appears to have caused some sticker shock. That is, it seems to have been conceived as a less expensive means of achieving these awards.
Put more broadly, I'm not sure that the rate schedule of one not-for-profit organization is a good reason to shift a task over to another not-for-profit organization. These are not for-profit businesses, who, in a capitalist model, should be encouraged to offer the same service for better rates than their competition. Most of this labour is volunteer in nature, and might be rather unsatisfying if it were performed merely for the sake of a slightly better deal. Finally, while some unique awards program obviously fulfills the part of the AMSAT mission statement that reads "promote the training and development of skilled satellite and ground system designers and operators," I can't see how a duplicate WAS or VUCC program really does so, especially since the years of experience with the ARRL awards does not suggest, by the number of recipients, that they have been a driving force in training these operators and designers.
73, Bruce