Welcome! Great questions.

Participation in academia has a long history in amateur radio. From significant atmospheric research accomplished with amateur collaboration in the 1920s to enormous contributions from amateurs in software defined radio, today.

There are a large number of university teams doing spacecraft. More interaction at earlier stages with the teams wanting to authentically include amateur radio will improve those payloads. That directly benefits the amateur service.

There’s a large number of academic payloads with very poorly thought out ground systems. Lots of opportunities there! Directly benefits all of us if using a payload is not unnecessarily challenging, frustrating, or ineffective.

Advanced digital microwave work is a gold mine of projects and possibilities. FPGA design, power amplifiers, feed design, user interface, accessibility design, cognitive radio, machine learning, genetic algorithms to speed decoding... and lots more.

Why should proprietary interests have all the fruits of academic labor, and have all the fun? Amateur radio has a unique position in the regulatory landscape and is an excellent partner for academia. I believe we should take full advantage of it whenever we can. GSoC is a good match.

It helps us by (potentially) producing modern work for amateur satellites.

I say potentially because some students will fail. That is the nature of any creative endeavor. We can all learn from failures too. I argue that there is only upside for us in participation.

Thank you,

Michelle W5NYV

On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 06:57 Joshua Ward via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:

I’m new to the board but I follow along. I guess I can make the ‘long time listener, first time caller joke’. I know that you follow me on twitter and you know that I’m active in the community, I’m not sure that I recognize any other other posters in this thread and I’m not sure some/most of you have ever uploaded to LOTW. So, greetings I guess. One of my passions is flying high-altitude balloons and the whole reason I got my tech license was to legally carry APRS for tracking. From there I blundered into amsats and was hooked almost instantly. My first launch was Kickstarter funded and I kind of made a promise to my backers that I’d talk to schools and involve myself in promoting STEM though my HAB passion. I genuinely feel I’ve lived up to my end but I still sponsor the occasional senior design project here at the university school of engineering. This usually comes in the form of an ME or EE design and I’ve never dabbled in sponsoring a CS project although I’ve got ideas. Frankly, I’m not sure I have the kind of time it takes to mentor a student right now but can you elaborate when you say: "I believe participation can greatly benefit the amateur satellite service.” And “we have plenty of really interesting and meaningful options for students to work on."

-J W3ARD _______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@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. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb