Greetings from Hot and Humid North Texas,

As I am sure everyone has heard, Ed Long, WA4SWJ is retiring from his duties as editor of the AMSAT Journal. Ed has done an outstanding job providing the AMSAT membership with a quality publication for over 8 years and we all owe him a debt of gratitude. Effective with the next issue of the Journal I will be assuming the responsibilities as Editor of the AMSAT Journal. Ed will be a hard act to follow, but I will do my best to continue to meet the high standards he has set in producing AMSAT's flagship publication.

To those of you who have already contributed articles and other material, thank you very much. I am very appreciative of your support. There will always be a need for material to publish in the Journal. My experience with AMSAT dates back to the mid 70s and I recall previous editors of the Journal constantly expressing their need for material and in today's Internet based world where information instantaneously flows freely around the globe, the Journal, as with other publications, is constantly competing for material. So please keep our flagship publication in mind and I can assure you that any material you would care to submit would be greatly appreciated.

If you don't have experience in writing an article, don't be intimidated - I'm new at this too! So, we will learn together. On the other hand AMSAT has many members with technical or academic backgrounds with lots of experience writing articles and papers. I urge these folks to share material with us as well. One of the great things about AMSAT is the opportunity for all of us to be exposed to interesting topics related to our hobby and science in general and to constantly learn about a wide variety of immensely interesting topics often times from leading experts in their fields.

Publishing a quality publication is hard work, much like building a satellite itself, it requires a team working together to insure that the publication reaches the membership in a timely manner which contains informative and useful content. In my view the Journal should address a number of topics on a regular basis. These topics include:

Organizational news

Spacecraft Engineering Topics

Spacecraft Operational Topics (Command and Control, mission analysis etc,)

Spacecraft Utilization (What's on the birds, what are we learning?)

Hands-On Projects for ground station applications

Educational News

Amateur Radio Astronomy

EME

High Altitude Balloon Flights

General Space Science Topics.

I am sure there are others, and if you have ideas, please let me know. To best serve the members, I would like to enlist the services of individuals who would be willing to serve as a column coordinators for each of the topics identified above. All too often, the folks building the spacecraft, raising the money to build them and running the organization itself are the same people that end up writing material for the Journal. While some of this is to be expected, these folks are already highly tasked and as we say in Texas "we need a few more horses to pull the wagon".

Please consider volunteering to be a member of the AMSAT Journal publication team. Your contribution would be greatly appreciated.

Please feel free to contact me with your ideas and suggestions.

I look forward to serving as your Journal editor.

73,

Doug, W5BL