The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, Inc. (AMSAT), a non-profit 501c3 organization in the U.S. which designs, builds, launches satellites for the use of radio amateurs worldwide is holding its annual meeting in Pittsburgh, Pa. this coming weekend.

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/symposium/2007/index.php

As with all amateur radio endeavors of any significance, a lot happens as a result of holding these meetings, and usually in the last hours before the event. This one is no different but I take the time to write to you because of some significant things that will happen at this meeting.

The following well known amateurs will attend in addition to the usual list of AMSAT suspects.

Frank Brickle, AB2KT Designer and co-author of DttSP, the software core used in PowerSDR (Flex-Radio), uwSDR (http://uwsdr.berlios.de) , jSDR, DttSP-shell, and several others. Designer and author of the VR, a radio kernel to be used in software/cognitive efforts for robust distributed computing radio systems and recently described at the DCC. Contributor to GnuRadio and HPSDR. For a general introduction to the entire area please http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz/start.htm

Phil Covington, N8VB Designer, author, leading developer in the HPSDR offerings (http://hpsdr.org) including Atlas, Ozymandias with contributions to Janus, Mercury, Penelope, and more.

Matt Ettus, N2MJI GnuRadio. Design of USRP and USRP2 for GnuRadio. And lead designer on the AMSAT Advanced Communications Package. http://ettus.com http://gnuradio.org/trac

Hartmut Päsler DL1YDD (AMSAT-DL V.P.) Hartmut will be telling us of the current status of Phase 3E and their launch opportunities and about Bochum 66' Dish that has been used to receive signals from planetary probes.

Bruce Perens K6BP formerly of Pixar and amongst other things, editor of the Bruce Perens Open Source series of books.

http://www.informit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=135563&redir=1 http://perens.com/

Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR Owner of Flex-Radio, designer of the SDR-1000, Flex5000 CONTRIBUTOR OF A MAJOR SYMPOSIUM PRIZE!!

At this meeting AMSAT-NA will announce a major new satellite opportunity for us and how we intend to take advantage of it if all the stars line up! President Rick Hambly, W2GPS, has been working nonstop on this and we are excited to tell you about it in the first level of detail we are able to give and how we will be proceeding.

We have an international audience attending and the symposium agenda is available from the URL above and many great speakers. Ya'll come.

I realize that this is the last minute but more than a little bit of this stuff happened in the LAST TWO WEEKS and until it was ready to release, we just couldn't. I am hoping to reach amateurs who are within driving distance of Pittsburgh or those who can decide at the last minute to come. I believe this is an AMSAT symposium you do not want to miss.

Bob McGwier