We have what I consider to be a firm decision on how to proceed. I am proud of where we are a year into my tenure. The details clearly need to be fleshed out but we have a way forward that I suspect technical people and user people can rally behind since it involves compromise and calculation. Rick Hambly has provided some necessary leadership here and I choose to get behind it to implement it. It is not everyone's ideal choice but it is a choice I can support.
For your information, we need desperately to get our act together on several different fronts and these are organizational in nature. I need to modify my role significantly now. I believe Jim will be much more comfortable now that we have a reasonably clear direction. He has fixed my greatest concern in that he has demonstrated usable internet connectivity that he can check wherever he is doing his normal daily living which requires travel. I believed he was completely ineffective when he could not communicate in a timely fashion. I saw emails get answered that were clearly "four generations" old in a thread and it aggravated me a lot. That has been completely fixed in my opinion recently. It is clear that with team member scattered over the world and the continent, effective telecommunications are absolutely required to effectively manage this project. I did not view this as fixed until two weeks ago. I now view it as fixed.
Since I am a known commodity to many of you, many of you come to me with things that should go directly to Jim. This undermines Jim in his attempt to manage the project. In addition, dealing with you individually actively hinders me doing exactly those things I need to do on an organizational level and slows some technical work that I personally responsible for. Jim and I have repeatedly run into things we thought the other was doing. Jim has fixed his telecom problems and I am now a reflector. Jim works for me since Eagle is engineering but this is going to be an organizational lead where I do composite budgets and make facilities available from the organization but I am not going to do daily management. Direct stuff to Jim.
Let me give three examples of those things I am going to be concentrating on in the next 30 days.
1) IHU-3 code since P3E needs a control mechanism to integrate. 2) Finishing a top level mechanical analysis, laying out design principles in spreadsheet form so we can place equipment inside our chosen model, and put the attitude control system in. I will be concentrating on helping the sensor team (welcome back Alan) get the big picture right. 3) SDR things that I am uniquely qualified to do, inextricably committed to doing, or am required to help with in a "hands on" way.
It is clear that we have won the battle to get the kinds of transponders we need to make this a new and different spacecraft. It will be technically challenging and that will be the fun part! I am no longer needed to lead the transponder team is my read and it needs someone who can dedicate themselves to that aspect of this. The team I have helped to assemble has an amazing collection of talent in it. Managed correctly, this team simply cannot fail. I need someone to step up and take over the transponder management and Jim should now take charge of finding that person. I do not wish to do more than advise Jim on his selection when he has some choices. For Jim to succeed in implementing these transponders, he needs to find someone he can work with so I bow out of the selection except to give solicited advise. Jim and I discussed this and I agree with his assessment that the team is better off being lead elsewhere. It would be my suggestion to Jim that the person he picks understands that this is really two teams being forced into the same "bucket": linear and ACP and they must be welded into an RF team.
I think we are close to announcing a construction, integration, testing facility. We will know in 30-45 days. I need to budget time for doing the planning on taking care of organizational business in the area of getting this lab going and getting our engineering house in order totally, not just for Eagle. This is exciting since I think we can set up a long term facility that is closer to the corporate offices, and can help our organization's educational status, and more. This is going to require a serious effort to complete by the end of the year. I believe this is the best use of my time for AMSAT in general and Eagle in particular outside of those specific technical tasks I have undertaken.
HPSDR and GnuRadio are, in my opinion, the most important technical projects outside of AMSAT for OUR future. They will have a large impact on amateur radio in general, and AMSAT in particular. We have engineering management things to get right with our sister organization TAPR. This will heat up in the next few months.
After I get the top level mechanical analysis work done with Bob Davis and Dick Jansson, I need to pass off that hat to someone who can live with it day to day. Should we actually make the organizational move on a laboratory that I think we are about to make, I will give my recommendation to Jim but I will need to back out of making this selection and limit my role to computation. The recommendation will be obvious if this falls into place.
As V.P. Engineering I will insist on being on all peer review committees and exactly how that will function will be worked out with Jim. Any further advice to the teams will be directed to individuals but will ALL contain CC to Jim. As an organizational matter, we need Jim to succeed and he needs to take the lead. He will have my support (and my friendly cattle prod) to do exactly that.
Bob N4HY