On 7/6/2011 9:48 PM, Dave Guimont wrote:

I don't know how in the world an FM satellite (TWO USER) on a 12 minute pass would help in an emergency...Unless there was only one person involved in the emergency! The other one being the assistance....

Actually, Bob B. said just the other week that they did monthly emergency nets on one of the FM sats and it was organized and worked well.

A lot of us were screaming ssb/cw (READ BANDWIDTH) when AMSAT-NA blew its wad on AO51.

For all the folks who were screaming "SSB", let's compare the number of users using AO-51 alone over the past couple of years to the number of users for all the linear sats in the same timeframe. I'd much rather AMSAT "blow its wad" on a crowded FM satellite then a linear one no one uses.

I remember one winter sometime around 1998 there was a real bad ice storm on the east coast. Canadian hams were using AO-27 to pass health and welfare traffic. There was no electricity up there for months, propagation was bad, there was no other way for some. I passed some traffic myself, sent out an email letting relatives know that they were ok. And yes while this was trying to go on, people were still calling CQ, and asking for grid squares :)

73 Jeff kb2m

-----Original Message----- From: amsat-bb-bounces@amsat.org [mailto:amsat-bb-bounces@amsat.org] On Behalf Of Dave Guimont Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 21:48 PM To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: [amsat-bb] FM satellites

I don't know how in the world an FM satellite (TWO USER) on a 12 minute pass would help in an emergency...Unless there was only one person involved in the emergency! The other one being the assistance....

A lot of us were screaming ssb/cw (READ BANDWIDTH) when AMSAT-NA blew its wad on AO51.

73, Dave, WB6LLO dguimon1@san.rr.com

Disagree: I learn....

Pulling for P3E...