Bruce,

I'll be Frank with you (no pun intended...). But, I really had to take a deep breath just now and release it slowly a few times, and re-read this email, completely, before sending it... I witnessed my dad being shot in an armed robbery down in liberty city (south FL) when I was 9 years old. It happened at my grandmas house on the car port, right across miami dade community college, south campus. My dad took a point blank bullet to the head after we got home from picking up groceries. So, no... a police officer never kneeled on MY neck but I have seen the absolute worst that humanity has to offer. And I treat every single human, with the same suspicion that those guys instilled in me on that day while approaching my family up the driveway. He was shot for $0.75c out of my moms purse. Oh! And, the officers falsely accused my parents of a drug-deal gone bad... which was a false accusation.... But, this didn't make me hate every gun owner, nor police officer on Earth.

That being said, I really had no opportunities of doing any amateur radio stuff as a kid or through college mostly due to life circumstances / finance. I graduated from high school in 1999, graduated from UCF in 2004. At UCF I hung out with many of the HAMs there, hung out in the physics lab, hacked at code/hardware with many... This is back when the amateur radio group was on the top floor of the math and physics building at UCF and when the campus administration allowed antennas on top of the building and allowed the club to maintain them. I remember going to the top of the building and looking down, it was cool! I remember at some point, the administration people told the club they had to take their antennas down because they "didn't like the view" from the admin building (which was within their view across the reflection pond in front of the library). I wasn't very involved with radio much back then, but I remember hearing my friends complain and thinking to myself "these admin people are really angry about people wanting to mess with radio at a college campus??!? Don't they have better things to worry about?!?!?" It was wrong, but I didn't know any better at the time and didn't bother trying to do anything about it. I was busy just trying to pass my classes... In the end, the antennas had to be moved. Looking back at this now, I feel this was a failure of UCF Administration. UCF gets a lot of attention today and they are my school, but they really screwed the amateur radio club there when I was present and i'll never forget that. The location of the ham club was perfect and so was the location of the antennas, admin really destroyed a perfectly good thing, in the name of "looking nice". At that time in college, I was never really motivated to get a license for any reason (it cost $). I worked the entire time throughout college, various jobs, from LA Fittness, Barnes and Noble, the math lab at UCF, the computer labs on campus, as a teaching assistant and a programmer at the Institute for Simulation and Training here in Orlando. After I graduated college, I started working, got married and started a family around 2007. We took a vacation and my uncle was showing me his ham HF equipment (this was in a different country in south america) while I was on vacation, which really got me interested in it. After that exposure, I decided to get my license when I returned and I got serious about it. After contacting a local amateur radio club about getting a license, there were some AMSAT guys there and they took me under their wing... without any reservation. And let me be clear, Several AMSAT Volunteers (and club members) took me under their wing and taught me almost everything I know about radio).. These "OLD" volunteers taught me machining, tons of interesting electronics/fab tricks, propagation, network analyzer intricacies, cable creation. These people asked for nothing in return, Nothing!! These are really amazing, giving, people. I even went to a teach-in with a few people at a school here in Orlando with the local school. This group of people exposed me to a world of knowledge that I did not receive as a kid in high school or even in college. I went through an entire computer science program, with all the math / physics (more graduate level than most), and never was exposed to RF.... Really... AMSAT (and the local amateur radio groups) are really the root-cause of my advancement. And, AMSAT was the primer.

On a side-note, they also exposed me to what it means to volunteer for something. What it actually means to volunteer. I had never seen people 'donate time' or 'donate effort' ever in my youth, because that concept didn't exist... I don't know if many on the -b actually get this or not, but everyone I observed in my youth was always just working and focused on surviving financially. The volunteers at AMSAT, were just giving awaytheir time, for the love of the game.... to a bunch of people they didn't know!!!! Umm... that's an incredible concept. Time is the most valuable commodity in life, hence, why I feel the way I do. I've seen nothing but positive, constructive, helpful representation from AMSAT. And, I am indebted to the individuals and organization for this and I will be for the rest of my life. If I didn't feel this way, I wouldn't spend my time writing this (and i'm a fast typer, average 110wpm on my daily keyboard, 80 maybe on someone else' without practice).

So, fast-foward to 2014 and right now. I'm not a hundred-thousandaire or millionaire, but I run my own small business, have employees and I am focused on software + hardware + machining. Some of the skills that I utilize now, I picked up as a result of these "old guys" who volunteered their time to teach me. So many people at AMSAT donated their time, to unknowingly Educate me, in one way or another. AMSAT has an absolutely amazing conglomeration of personalities, engineering experiences, political beliefs, technical and non-technical experiences. None of these should be overshadowed. Many people in AMSAT have really changed my life and I know that I am not the only one that feels this way. As a result, I take all of this very personally. Maybe this is just my own experience and maybe i'm the only one... but.. None of these people hired lawyers against me, ever.

Like anything else in life, all that really matters is the people. I hope the people that prevail in this election are able to propagate the same characteristics and values that the people of AMSAT have shown me in the past.

Joseph Armbruster KJ4JIO

On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 5:42 PM Bruce Perens bruce@perens.com wrote:

On Fri, Aug 7, 2020, 2:11 PM Joseph Armbruster via AMSAT-BB < amsat-bb@amsat.org> wrote:

...

This sure makes me wonder, why didn't AMSAT ever do this against me or the tons of volunteers and engineers before me? You can't tell me this is the first case of some problem...

Joseph,

And no police officer ever kneeled on _your_ neck, or your friends, so it must be the Black person's problem, right?

It's the exact same argument.

There has been no shortage of conflict between AMSAT management and volunteers. I have a long list of people whom I know were the major developers of previous AMSAT missions, who we don't see here any longer.

As I said previously, no one hired lawyers against you because you did not act as opposition to the incumbent board.

...