Remembering the days of AO-40.
AO-40 had many ups and down as we all know, but S-band dwnlink did prove to be a life jacket for AO-40, and worked out great, many hams arond the world proved that you did not need a large dish to access the satellite's dwnlink provided the squint angle was below 20 degrees. remember the S1 tx'er I only had 33 contacts on that band but man did it kick some butt, on S2 tx'er I had 568 contacts, 40+ country's worked, hours of qso's,
remember the many AO-40 beacon plus 20 nets, thanks to Dave WB6LLO no problems their.
if AMSAT is going to take survey's of what the membership wants then don't do something different, this is how you loose members and funding, I like many others have already sent hundreds of dollars to the project eagle based on what your "AMSAT" survey had showed thinking that was the direction it would take.
tell me if I'm wrong, but did the survey not show members want HEO's over LEO's and mode's preffered most was Mode-B and mode-S
if it takes longer to come up with a design that will work based on what the members want so be it,
I for one don't care if we don't have coverage 24/7 but we have a at least one HEO in orbit all times.
Greg N0ZHE