Hi all,

I have not posted here for some months, I think since after the April Gregarine non-event. I expressed skepticism then on whether we would have an ultimate successful deployment. It is my hope that the new Board of Directors for AMSAT will look long and hard at this situation and come away with good lessons learned. We gave up far too much control in the name of International cooperation I think.

That being said, I do disagree with the ideas presented in post 16 below and others who belittle the student satellite initiatives as "Squakboxes". As long as FCC or IARU or ITU or anybody else in the world's regulations about not using Amateur Radio frequencies for "Pecuniary" gain as it says in Part 97.3 (4) of our FCC rules, (Meaning you cannot make money off of the service or frequencies), then I have no problem with the use of amateur radio frequencies to further education and science training. Perhaps more of us should be volunteering our time working with these educational institutions developing cubesats and enlighten them on how providing real communications capabilities to these satellites, not just telemetry, could enhance the visibility of their projects.

73

Tom Schuessler, N5HYP ------------------------------

Message: 16 Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2011 03:21:19 +0000 From: Jim Jerzycke kq6ea@verizon.net Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: a little perspective To: Bruce Robertson ve9qrp@gmail.com Cc: AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org Message-ID: 4E3A102F.5030707@verizon.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

I'm sorry, Bruce, but I'm not buying it.

It was a screw-up, plain and simple.

And we can't make lemonade out of it.

At least AO-40 had a usable life for some. This thing is just another squawk box in space, like all the "student" satellites that are using the Amateur Radio frequencies for a free downlink.

Jim