Didn't they just "survey" the membership one year ago? If the surveys aren't going to be on topic or considered in the final decision as to band preference, why not save the money for more worthwhile ventures?
Roger WA1KAT
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Meuse" smeuse@mara.org To: "Andrew Glasbrenner" glasbrenner@mindspring.com Cc: "'AMSAT'" amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 4:19 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: S band downlink on P3E
Andrew Glasbrenner expunged (glasbrenner@mindspring.com):
Everyone knows I'm a big supporter of AMSAT, but I gotta call it as I
see
it. It makes me think of "bait and switch" to collect money for a
project
featuring such a popular mode and then drop it.
I'm somewhat glad that AO40 ended up with it's only downlink on S band. It
forced me to educate myself on microwaves. Thanks to that unfortunate accident, I'm now active on all bands up to 10Ghz.
When I saw the latest band layout I was dissapointed.
I know the builders have a constant struggle between building something
that is usable vs. something that advances the state of the art. I just think that the majority of people realized that S band was easy, therefore very usable. CC Rider was a huge step forward for us, even if it wasn't eventually doable. Going back to V/U modes seems to me taking a step backward to me.
I don't want to seem negative, I really appreciate every ounce of work the
builders put in, I just think maybe they need to take a little more input from the active community before the set things in motion.
-Steve N1JFU
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