The Bylaw revisions adopted by the Board were necessary for saving
money, primarily by allowing electronic communications. For example,
under the current bylaws, we were required to spend a few thousand
dollars to notify the membership of these bylaw changes by mail rather
than simply emailing the membership. That will no longer be necessary
when they go into effect. The adopted amendments are a culmination of
a year-long process of reviewing the existing bylaws by a committee
appointed for that purpose. The amendments included a few other
changes and clarifications to remove some ambiguities that had arisen
over the past several years. I'm not quite sure why a few have latched
on to a simple provision designed to protect the organization and all
of its members in the rare circumstance that someone applies for
membership that would be unsuitable as a member. Hopefully it will
never have to be used.

As far as satellite development, perhaps you missed the lead story in
last week's ANS (reproduced below). Our engineering team is doing a
lot of exciting work.

73,

Paul, N8HM

AMSAT’s GOLF-TEE CubeSat Manifested for Launch on ELaNa-46

AMSAT’s GOLF-TEE CubeSat has been manifested for launch on NASA’s
ELaNa-46 mission.

GOLF-TEE is the first satellite in AMSAT’s “Greater Orbit, Larger
Footprint” or GOLF program. The goal of the GOLF program is to work by
steps through a series of increasingly capable spacecraft to learn to
develop systems and skills needed to achieve successful high orbit
missions. Among these are active attitude control and the ability to
command attitude changes, deployable/steerable solar panels, radiation
tolerance for commercial off the shelf (COTS) components in higher
orbits, and propulsion. The eventual goal of the GOLF program is a
satellite in Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) similar to AO-10, AO-13,
and AO-40, but at a currently affordable cost combined with
significantly enhanced capabilities, which in turn will allow the use
of much less complex ground stations.

The -TEE designation in GOLF-TEE stands for “Technology Exploration
Environment” reflecting GOLF-TEE’s mission testing two primary systems
needed for higher orbits. First, an Attitude Determination and Control
(ADAC) system will be tested to allow active pointing of the
satellites antennas, which will have significant gain. The other
primary goal of GOLF-TEE is to gain initial orbit and space radiation
exposure for radiation event-induced fault tolerant systems designed
using COTS components. GOLF-TEE will carry an Integrated Housekeeping
Unit (IHU) / command transceiver designed using the Hercules line of
ARM architecture-based microcontrollers.

GOLF-TEE will also evaluate a low-cost, deployable, fixed attitude,
solar panel array design as part of AMSAT Engineering’s exploration of
fixed panel arrays that allow for outfitting a variable number of
“wings” in order to best match the power requirements of various
CubeSat missions.

Additionally, GOLF-TEE will carry a modified commercial
software-defined radio (SDR), the Ettus E310, as an experimental
package to test high speed data downlink in the 10 GHz band.

GOLF-TEE will also be a fully-functional LEO VHF/UHF amateur satellite
carrying conventional backup systems, including a linear transponder,
similar to those flown on AO-109.

A significant amount of funding is necessary to complete the
development and construction of the GOLF series of CubeSats. Please
consider a donation today. Donations designated for the AMSAT GOLF
program may be made at
https://www.amsat.org/donations/amsat-golf-program-donations/

[ANS thanks AMSAT Engineering for the above information]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 12:50 PM Michael Walker <va3mw@portcredit.net> wrote:
>
> It would be nice if AMSAT stopped wasting my money playing internal politics and used it for something truly productive for actually making QSO's in the Sky.
>
> Mike va3mw
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 12:17 PM Ray Soifer via AMSAT-BB <amsat-bb@amsat.org> wrote:
>>
>> I agree with Bob McGwier. It fails the smell test.
>>
>> In addition, as a co-author of the 1989 By-laws, I need to emphasize that the proposed amendment would not be consistent with the
>> Articles of Incorporation.
>>
>> 73 Ray W2RS
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed
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>> Acceptable Use and Privacy Policies available at https://www.amsat.org/about-amsat/
>>
>> View archives of this mailing list at
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>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Sent via AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed
> are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA.
> Acceptable Use and Privacy Policies available at https://www.amsat.org/about-amsat/
>
> View archives of this mailing list at
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> To unsubscribe send an email to amsat-bb-leave(a)amsat.org
> Manage all of your AMSAT-NA mailing list preferences at https://mailman.amsat.org

Sent via AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed
are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA.
Acceptable Use and Privacy Policies available at https://www.amsat.org/about-amsat/

View archives of this mailing list at
https://mailman.amsat.org/hyperkitty/list/amsat-bb@amsat.org
To unsubscribe send an email to amsat-bb-leave(a)amsat.org
Manage all of your AMSAT-NA mailing list preferences at https://mailman.amsat.org