Tom Clark, K3IO wrote:

I wonder what representation we had at last week's (19-21 April) Cubesat Developers Conference in Huntington Beach?

Unfortunately, I was not able to be there, as it occured during the last week of classes at my college. Hopefully, by next year I will be re-retired, and able to attend.

most of the satellites use amateur 2M/70cm resources, but few even mention ham radio.

I am under the impression that most of the CubeSat projects have ham mentors. I would hope that they would be able to impress upon the folks at their respective schools the importance of ham radio to the big picture. We need to get those folks together at some point (maybe at the Space Symposium), and have a session on how best to achieve their ancillary duties, beyond the technical (which they already do quite well).

Nowhere did I note a single reference to AMSAT or IARU. IMHO, it looks like we have failed to get our message thru to these folks.

Tom is right. It's not enough to just do good tech, or good education. We need to do better PR! Unfortunately, most of us are so focused upon our particular niche that we tend to overlook this aspect of our duties (and I am as guilty as anyone in this regard). We should consider adopting ARRL's model, and have public relations volunteers to whom we techies feed our reports, who will then wave our flag for us in public.

73, Paul