Great news. Thanks for handling this. Paul asked me into the hall during the symposium to express his concerns. His worries turned out to be reasonable. I received a private note from I8CVS wondering why we would be encouraging Region 1 hams to break the law. If the extra language mitigates this, I think that we should modify our public statements to carefully point out our intentions. May I still suggest that we should attempt to go through the IARU coordination and FCC notification as early as is practicable since we do not wish to build an entire program around a wish and a prayer. If we were going to do that we would fly L band up only.
Bob N4HY
Rick Hambly (W2GPS) wrote:
Bob,
I spoke with Paul Rinaldo today. He is concerned that the wording of our press release, as shown on the main AMSAT Web page, could be misinterpreted to imply that we are encouraging Hams in Region 1 to uplink to Eagle on 3.4 GHz (S2-band).
While I disagree with him on this point I see no problem with adding a footnote or comment to every such engineering and news release that explains that we are providing the alternative L-band uplink for those Region 1 users who do not have Amateur Satellite Service authorization on S2-band.
Paul agreed that this will alleviate his concerns about FCC and ITU reaction to our plans.
I copied Paul on this e-mail to be sure he has a chance to comment if I have misunderstood his comments.
Rick W2GPS AMSAT President