Re: KickSat - a personal spacecraft of your own in space
Hi Steve,
I don't agree that "the more people that get a taste of satellites, the better". AMSAT will then turn from quality into quantity, with a high risk that it will get out of control (RF wise and launch space wise) with so many small sat projects.
Now everything is scattered into small satellites (mostly CubeSat) and the big satellites that can unite the international AMSAT community are pushed backwards into the big crowd. Every real AMSAT ham still knows about the AO10, AO13, AO40, FO20/29... even after they stopped working. I wonder how many will remember all those Cubes...
I would more like to see that people get interrested in the technology and try to get there ham license because of interrest in technology. Nowadays a license is not really needed, just a dongle and software and you can say you are working on satellites. Nice for students to get "a taste from the small cookies", but not to "have a big meal when you get more hungry", as there is not many big food available (big satellites).
I really support the idea to help newcommers, but in my opinion it is getting out of balance... (I believe due to the commercial and publicity value of those Cubes...)
73 de PE1RAH William Leijenaar
William, I have wondered about this, too.
I have come to think of these as seeds. Seeds that plant the idea of satellites in the heads of people and make them want larger, better (heo) systems.
They won't last that long, so the idea of RF pollution isn't really there. And, if the sat sub-band can have a section devoted to these cube sats such that they aren't everywhere, even better.
The more people that get a taste of satellites, the better.
--STeve Andre' wb8wsf en72
----- Original Message ----- From: "William Leijenaar" pe1rah@yahoo.com To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 11:04 AM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: KickSat - a personal spacecraft of your own in space
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Every real AMSAT ham still knows about the AO10, AO13, AO40, FO20/29... even after they stopped working. I wonder how many will remember all those Cubes...
73 de PE1RAH William Leijenaar
Hi William, PE1RAH
I do remember that when OSCAR-10, OSCAR-13 and AO40 were alive and well this net on AMSAT-BB was full of technical messages from W3IWI now K3IO ,G3RUH, G3WDG, ZL1AOX, VK5AGR and many others from wich it was possible to lern on radio technique particularly in the field of RF and antennas as you can realize reading the old AMSAT-BB messages from 1998 all available into the AMSAT-BB Archives at:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/amsat-bb/index.html
By the way actually with the prolification of Microsats,Nanosats and so on the above fellows seems to be not interested on satellite discussions and they abandoned the net because actually you can work an FM LEO with an HT and arrow antenna and so you do not need to be technical to do that.
You are correct when you writes:
Now everything is scattered into small satellites (mostly CubeSat) and the big satellites that can unite the international AMSAT community are pushed backwards into the big crowd.
And you are also correct writing:
I would more like to see that people get interrested in the technology and try to get there ham license because of interrest in technology.
I believe that the satellite community will increase again the know how in RF technology only when P3E will be in orbit thanks to AMSAT-DL efforts and only when P3E will be operational AMSAT will then turn back to quality and everyone will forget all those Cubes...
In the mean time waiting for the future with P3E since I like to talk with a satellite fellow more than for 5 seconds I only work the linear VO-52 thanks to your great job in cooperation with AMSAT India and ISRO.
Best 73" de
i8CVS Domenico
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