Hi David,

Very quiet out here on the West Coast too. I kept waiting for some ACP RF/Microwave chores but no direction has been forthcoming. We're going to have to really hustle if we're to meet the 2009 launch date that's stated in our "Mission Vision!"

Somehow - someway - we 'gotta do better than this!! Just hang in there David.

Regards...Bill - N6GHz

David Goncalves wrote:

Man, this sucks. There were teleconferences, then the sound of crickets for months.

Whomever is listening, I'm still and always available for those FPGA tasks.

Actually, anybody listening?

David Goncalves W1EUJ

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 10:09 PM, Michelle [email protected] wrote:

...

Bob fired Matt Ettus on 23 June 2008. He fired me, for lack of a better term, on 26 June 2008.

It was unnecessarily harsh and inaccurate. It was impersonal, and inappropriate.

According to several AMSAT executives, Bob McGwier is mentally ill. I am told he suffers from bipolar disorder. Despite knowing this (if this is true), AMSAT has chosen to appoint him to Vice President of Engineering. They intend, as far as I can tell, to keep him in this position, regardless of the result.

While mental illness cannot and should not suffer stigma, it also is a factor in assigning responsibility.

I think Bob needs help and support. I also think he needs to resign, and get help, and then return to contribute as a valued and irreplaceable technical volunteer.

-Michelle W5NYV

----- Original Message ---- From: Bdale Garbee [email protected] To: AMSAT BoD [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; AMSAT Eagle [email protected]; Bob McGwier N4HY [email protected] Sent: Monday, July 7, 2008 5:38:59 PM Subject: [eagle] what is going on?

I just returned from nearly a month of travel/vacation with my family, including 4925 miles of cross-country road-trip. Two of the personal highlights were my daughter Elizabeth KC0OTR passing her Extra exam in Grand Junction, CO, and my first visit to the NRAO facility at Green Bank, WV.

In trying to catch up on the email backlog in preparation for re-engaging in less vacation-oriented activities, I find myself somethere between utterly confused and completely dismayed regarding AMSAT activities I care about.

    It seems like it has been months since I heard about any
    activity on Eagle or the associated ride-share opportunity other
    than what is being discussed on the namaste-dev list.  ???

    I see references in Michelle's weekly summaries about a meeting
    in San Diego on the weekend of 18 July, but can't find any
    information about who is meeting and for what purpose.  Is this
    something I should show up for?  I've tried emailing a couple
    folks directly that I thought might be able to give me details,
    but have had no replies.  I happen to have that weekend open at
    the moment.

    An email from Bob McGwier to the eagle list on June 5th
    indicated that he has resigned as VP Engineering and does not
    intend to run for another term on the Board.  While I'm pleased
    to see that he remains active on the namaste-dev list, I haven't
    read anything yet indicating who is expected to replace him?
    Who's supposedly running our Eagle and related engineering
    projects now that Jim and Bob have both stepped down?

    Matt Ettus reports that he has been "fired" and is thus no
    longer working on the ACP.  Why?  I find it nearly inconceivable
    that AMSAT would intentionally push away someone of his talent,
    vision, and demonstrated persistence of contribution.  I
    sincerely hope this is a misunderstanding of some kind?

Would someone *please* tell me what is going on?

73 - Bdale, KB0G

---

Via the Eagle mailing list courtesy of AMSAT-NA [email protected] http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/eagle

---

Via the Eagle mailing list courtesy of AMSAT-NA [email protected] http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/eagle

We have only one way forward for Eagle or the Intelsat opportunities and that is raise money. The days where we had our engineering cowboy and cowgirl friends doing engineering experiments for rocket manufacturers or space programs and were willing to sign us up to ride on experimental launches for "free" are gone, long gone. We signed on to those launches without equipment in hand, built, etc. Those days are over. So we have a serious chicken and egg problem. We need to be credible to raise the money. What was being attempted and ended in personal disaster, and I hope will be again soon with new management (meaning my replacement and NOTHING MORE), is a design and build out of equipment that "will prove the point".

CONTROVERSY FOLLOWS:

There is an alternative to think about. I would not wait forever for the larger picture to come together, for the good of AMSAT and amateur radio. A likelihood assessment needs to be made regularly about the "Vision Thing" and the will power to change directions should be found if it needs to be done. We could put together a small, simple package and smaller than desirable antennas and give our users analog transponders on an Intelsat platform. This would require large antennas on the ground and would serve to make our current user base quite happy I am sure. If we do this, it should be the absolute dumbest, most bullet proof, impossible to destroy, dumber than rock, transponder without a single chance of failing in 300 years unless the rocket blows up or it is hit by a meteor. It would be a box with two connectors and a power plug going to the smallest possible CREDIBLE antennas. There has been an argument that this is very undesirable for the long term health of AMSAT, Inc. I made the argument in the open and have suffered regular personal threats as a result since from one very angry disgruntled member. I am sure it was the manner in which I presented the argument that caused the reaction so I am 99% to blame.

But this is clearly outside of the vision statement of AMSAT, but it would be a way forward. If we come in with very low mass, with little footprint and 50-100 w peak power requirements, and we look at the matrix of costs Intelsat gave us, I think we might be able to raise that amount from "amateur radio sources".

PARTY LINE:

For the bigger payload and more complex vision, ACP driven, we will need 10-20 times that much money. I will be the first to admit that I have been utterly daunted until about 12 months ago, trying to decide what to do, how it might be accomplished. Intelsat came first, and then a way we could to try and get the attention and then respect of FEMA/DHS soon followed. All of the personal work I did to find a way forward had absolutely nothing to do with engineering. It was playing bureaucratic games and finding "low friends in high places" work. Very unsatisfying personally but I could not see any other way forward.

Anyway, both are ways to go. Our new leaders will decide. Either choice will be maddening to others should AMSAT choose it. The new AMSAT board in October and the officers they choose will have a hill or two to climb to say the least. I think they need to be given the best possible opportunity to make choices and that entails doing some technical work, taking the work done by the ground station team (NAMASTE) and having a discussion on how to proceed.

Personal:

The interpersonal issues are over with for me. I have removed myself from the path of destruction and as an element in a hypergolic mixture in the weak motor housing called AMSAT. Michelle has given me very good advice: get out of management and do technical work. We have settled the argument and I got in the last words: YES MAAM. I completely agree with her so the argument is over with for me. Other arguments will be done without me.

--- technical ---

GnuRadio, the software system, not to be confused with the USRP hardware, has a system in it call gr-pager. It uses a polyphase filter bank to channelize pager bands and then simultaneously demodulate the pager bursts when received. I have been adding the correct filter computations (the same ones I promised Matt and Eric some time ago ..... sigh) in my fbpoly branch. It is a pretty simple matter to take the signal front end and turn it into gr-acp-rx. The bpsk, qpsk demodulators are there. I am unsure about M-FSK, but it is simple to write and so gr-acp-tx should also be simple to write. With a simple prototype waveform (source coding, channel coding, packet structure, etc.) for each, we could have a live demo very quickly. Rick has been setting up subversion servers for multiple purposes on his servers. I thought I would put together a 2m-70cm subset of the ACP system, running at slower rates on the downlink and with fewer channels but have it ready to show at Atlanta.

Matt was kind enough to modify his 70cm RF board to do 70cm and in parallel. I do not think this will be even a lot of work to do and we can see a tangible result with this. 16-32 channels of uplink and map to TDM for the downlink should be achievable.

I will put code on the AMSAT subversion server. I would put it on GR but I don't want to argue about having to put FSF where AMSAT, Inc will need to go in the copyright. I am not suggesting that we follow this path. I am suggesting that it is a personal choice for me to do it. If it is useful to AMSAT, good. If not, I hope it will be a generator of ideas.

73's Bob N4HY

ARRL SDR Working Group Chair Member: ARRL, AMSAT, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats, NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. "Trample the slow .... Hurdle the dead"

-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John B. Stephensen Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 6:46 PM To: Bill Ress; David Goncalves Cc: [email protected] Subject: [eagle] Re: what is going on?

I'd guess that the inter-personal issues can be resolved in a few weeks. Launch funding is the main issue and not just for AMSAT-NA. At Ham Radio 2008 the P3E update included the statement that "the cost quoted by Arianespace for the launch of P3E is outside the budget of AMSAT-DL."

73,

John KD6OZH

Bob wrote:

There is an alternative to think about. I would not wait forever for the larger picture to come together, for the good of AMSAT and amateur radio. A likelihood assessment needs to be made regularly about the "Vision Thing" and the will power to change directions should be found if it needs to be done. We could put together a small, simple package and smaller than desirable antennas and give our users analog transponders on an Intelsat platform. This would require large antennas on the ground and would serve to make our current user base quite happy I am sure. If we do this, it should be the absolute dumbest, most bullet proof, impossible to destroy, dumber than rock, transponder without a single chance of failing in 300 years unless the rocket blows up or it is hit by a meteor. It would be a box with two connectors and a power plug going to the smallest possible CREDIBLE antennas. There has been an argument that this is very undesirable for the long term health of AMSAT, Inc. I made the argument in the open and have suffered regular personal threats as a result since from one very angry disgruntled member. I am sure it was the manner in which I presented the argument that caused the reaction so I am 99% to blame.

But this is clearly outside of the vision statement of AMSAT, but it would be a way forward. If we come in with very low mass, with little footprint and 50-100 w peak power requirements, and we look at the matrix of costs Intelsat gave us, I think we might be able to raise that amount from "amateur radio sources".

This idea has been floating around for some time now, but to see you suggest it is a powerful example of convergent thinking. I do not believe that it is an either/or situation. The ACP is a complex design, and developing and implementing it is going to be a long road, that frankly we may not have enough momentum to carry us down. A simple, SMALL linear transponder as you describe would serve as an intermediate step, allowing us to keep the organization alive, build the membership and hence the donation base, and blaze the trail to launching ACP.

One point of disagreement is that this intermediate step is, to me at least, clearly -inside- the mission statement, even moreso than the ACP. For those that have forgotten, here is the mission statement:

"AMSAT is a non-profit volunteer organization which designs, builds and operates experimental satellites and promotes space education. We work in partnership with government, industry, educational institutions and fellow amateur radio societies. We encourage technical and scientific innovation, and promote the training and development of skilled satellite and ground system designers and operators.

Our Vision is to deploy high earth orbit satellite systems that offer daily coverage by 2009 and continuous coverage by 2012. AMSAT will continue active participation in human space missions and support a stream of LEO satellites developed in cooperation with the educational community and other amateur satellite groups."

The intermediate step would immediately fulfill the continuous coverage part of the vision statement, and I think it has a much better chance of success by 2012, and certainly 2009, than does the ACP.

The decision to make this course correction certainly does have considerable benefits and risks, but I think it is one the BOD -and- the members should carefully consider, and if we go forward with it, the infighting and Monday morning quarterbacking needs to be left behind and a serious "get to the moon" effort be undertaken. We'll need 10 times the people soliciting donations as actually building the thing, but I do believe it's well within reason to be accomplished.

73, Drew KO4MA

Assuming the average occupancy that I witnessed on AO-13, a 25 kHz wide linear transponder would work for the current membership, but I have no idea whether they would provide enough donations to fund it.

73,

John KD6OZH

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Glasbrenner" [email protected] To: "Bob McGwier" [email protected]; "'John B. Stephensen'" [email protected]; "'Bill Ress'" [email protected]; "'David Goncalves'" [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; "'AMSAT BoD'" [email protected] Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 11:20 UTC Subject: Re: [eagle] Re: what is going on?, some technical content at last.

Bob wrote:

...

There is an alternative to think about. I would not wait forever for the larger picture to come together, for the good of AMSAT and amateur radio. A likelihood assessment needs to be made regularly about the "Vision Thing" and the will power to change directions should be found if it needs to be done. We could put together a small, simple package and smaller than desirable antennas and give our users analog transponders on an Intelsat platform. This would require large antennas on the ground and would serve to make our current user base quite happy I am sure. If we do this, it should be the absolute dumbest, most bullet proof, impossible to destroy, dumber than rock, transponder without a single chance of failing in 300 years unless the rocket blows up or it is hit by a meteor. It would be a box with two connectors and a power plug going to the smallest possible CREDIBLE antennas. There has been an argument that this is very undesirable for the long term health of AMSAT, Inc. I made the argument in the open and have suffered regular personal threats as a result since from one very angry disgruntled member. I am sure it was the manner in which I presented the argument that caused the reaction so I am 99% to blame.

But this is clearly outside of the vision statement of AMSAT, but it would be a way forward. If we come in with very low mass, with little footprint and 50-100 w peak power requirements, and we look at the matrix of costs Intelsat gave us, I think we might be able to raise that amount from "amateur radio sources".

This idea has been floating around for some time now, but to see you suggest it is a powerful example of convergent thinking. I do not believe that it is an either/or situation. The ACP is a complex design, and developing and implementing it is going to be a long road, that frankly we may not have enough momentum to carry us down. A simple, SMALL linear transponder as you describe would serve as an intermediate step, allowing us to keep the organization alive, build the membership and hence the donation base, and blaze the trail to launching ACP.

One point of disagreement is that this intermediate step is, to me at least, clearly -inside- the mission statement, even moreso than the ACP. For those that have forgotten, here is the mission statement:

"AMSAT is a non-profit volunteer organization which designs, builds and operates experimental satellites and promotes space education. We work in partnership with government, industry, educational institutions and fellow amateur radio societies. We encourage technical and scientific innovation, and promote the training and development of skilled satellite and ground system designers and operators.

Our Vision is to deploy high earth orbit satellite systems that offer daily coverage by 2009 and continuous coverage by 2012. AMSAT will continue active participation in human space missions and support a stream of LEO satellites developed in cooperation with the educational community and other amateur satellite groups."

The intermediate step would immediately fulfill the continuous coverage part of the vision statement, and I think it has a much better chance of success by 2012, and certainly 2009, than does the ACP.

The decision to make this course correction certainly does have considerable benefits and risks, but I think it is one the BOD -and- the members should carefully consider, and if we go forward with it, the infighting and Monday morning quarterbacking needs to be left behind and a serious "get to the moon" effort be undertaken. We'll need 10 times the people soliciting donations as actually building the thing, but I do believe it's well within reason to be accomplished.

73, Drew KO4MA

AO-40 was heavily promoted in QST and downlinks were 10 dB stronger than AO-13 so activity went up. I don't know how long it would have lasted. One interesting fact was that the AO-13 70 cm downlink worked much better in Los Angeles than the 2 meter downlink. Ambient noise was about 15 dB lower.

73,

John KD6OZH

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Glasbrenner" [email protected] To: "John B. Stephensen" [email protected]; "Bob McGwier" [email protected]; "'Bill Ress'" [email protected]; "'David Goncalves'" [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; "'AMSAT BoD'" [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 02:16 UTC Subject: Re: [eagle] Re: what is going on?, some technical content at last.

I wasn't on AO-13 on my own, although I was exposed to it via a ham friend a few times. AO-40 had enough traffic that 25kHz would not begin to be enough, even on UL/S. I'd say 100 kHz would be a good lower limit.

It's my view, and one shared by others, that a linear transponder would certainly still have most, if not all, of the same EMCOMM benefits as the ACP, and should be in the running for governmental aid as well. It is certainly more within our -immediate- grasp, and would keep us alive membership-wise while we complete the ACP. I don't want anyone to think I'm against the ACP as a project, I'm simply being practical about what our priorities may need to become to ensure the organizations immediate survival.

I think both roads really lead us to a rideshare of some sort, whether that be Intelsat or GPS or GOES, or whomever else we can hitch our wagon to.

73, and thanks for the ongoing discussion, Drew KO4MA

----- Original Message ----- From: "John B. Stephensen" [email protected] To: "Andrew Glasbrenner" [email protected]; "Bob McGwier" [email protected]; "'Bill Ress'" [email protected]; "'David Goncalves'" [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; "'AMSAT BoD'" [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 9:58 PM Subject: Re: [eagle] Re: what is going on?, some technical content at last.

...

Assuming the average occupancy that I witnessed on AO-13, a 25 kHz wide linear transponder would work for the current membership, but I have no idea whether they would provide enough donations to fund it.

73,

John KD6OZH

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Glasbrenner" [email protected] To: "Bob McGwier" [email protected]; "'John B. Stephensen'" [email protected]; "'Bill Ress'" [email protected]; "'David Goncalves'" [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; "'AMSAT BoD'" [email protected] Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 11:20 UTC Subject: Re: [eagle] Re: what is going on?, some technical content at last.

...

Bob wrote:

...

There is an alternative to think about. I would not wait forever for the larger picture to come together, for the good of AMSAT and amateur radio. A likelihood assessment needs to be made regularly about the "Vision Thing" and the will power to change directions should be found if it needs to be done. We could put together a small, simple package and smaller than desirable antennas and give our users analog transponders on an Intelsat platform. This would require large antennas on the ground and would serve to make our current user base quite happy I am sure. If we do this, it should be the absolute dumbest, most bullet proof, impossible to destroy, dumber than rock, transponder without a single chance of failing in 300 years unless the rocket blows up or it is hit by a meteor. It would be a box with two connectors and a power plug going to the smallest possible CREDIBLE antennas. There has been an argument that this is very undesirable for the long term health of AMSAT, Inc. I made the argument in the open and have suffered regular personal threats as a result since from one very angry disgruntled member. I am sure it was the manner in which I presented the argument that caused the reaction so I am 99% to blame.

But this is clearly outside of the vision statement of AMSAT, but it would be a way forward. If we come in with very low mass, with little footprint and 50-100 w peak power requirements, and we look at the matrix of costs Intelsat gave us, I think we might be able to raise that amount from "amateur radio sources".

This idea has been floating around for some time now, but to see you suggest it is a powerful example of convergent thinking. I do not believe that it is an either/or situation. The ACP is a complex design, and developing and implementing it is going to be a long road, that frankly we may not have enough momentum to carry us down. A simple, SMALL linear transponder as you describe would serve as an intermediate step, allowing us to keep the organization alive, build the membership and hence the donation base, and blaze the trail to launching ACP.

One point of disagreement is that this intermediate step is, to me at least, clearly -inside- the mission statement, even moreso than the ACP. For those that have forgotten, here is the mission statement:

"AMSAT is a non-profit volunteer organization which designs, builds and operates experimental satellites and promotes space education. We work in partnership with government, industry, educational institutions and fellow amateur radio societies. We encourage technical and scientific innovation, and promote the training and development of skilled satellite and ground system designers and operators.

Our Vision is to deploy high earth orbit satellite systems that offer daily coverage by 2009 and continuous coverage by 2012. AMSAT will continue active participation in human space missions and support a stream of LEO satellites developed in cooperation with the educational community and other amateur satellite groups."

The intermediate step would immediately fulfill the continuous coverage part of the vision statement, and I think it has a much better chance of success by 2012, and certainly 2009, than does the ACP.

The decision to make this course correction certainly does have considerable benefits and risks, but I think it is one the BOD -and- the members should carefully consider, and if we go forward with it, the infighting and Monday morning quarterbacking needs to be left behind and a serious "get to the moon" effort be undertaken. We'll need 10 times the people soliciting donations as actually building the thing, but I do believe it's well within reason to be accomplished.

73, Drew KO4MA

The S band downlink was very useful on AO-13. Mode BS allowed me to copy weak signals using the S downlink and others to copy me on the V downlink. By the time of AO-40 I had periodic long duration interference from WiFi devices in the neighborhood so the S downlink was unusable for hours at a time.

73,

John KD6OZH

----- Original Message ----- From: "Lyle Johnson" [email protected] To: "John B. Stephensen" [email protected] Cc: "Andrew Glasbrenner" [email protected]; "Bob McGwier" [email protected]; "'Bill Ress'" [email protected]; "'David Goncalves'" [email protected]; "'AMSAT BoD'" [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 03:01 UTC Subject: Re: [eagle] Re: what is going on?, some technical content at last.

...

AO-40 was heavily promoted in QST and downlinks were 10 dB stronger than AO-13 so activity went up.

Yep, sometimes I heard 4 or 5 stations in addition to the Colorado continuous SSTV downlink! And LEILA stepping on everything it could find (except the SSTV downlink :-(

...

I don't know how long it would have lasted. One interesting fact was that the AO-13 70 cm downlink worked much better in Los Angeles than the 2 meter downlink. Ambient noise was about 15 dB lower.

AO-40 had downlinks strong enough to actually use. AO-13 was definitely for weak-signal operation and needed serious antennas. Karl's analog HELAPS was realy pushing the envelope to get near 100 kHz bandwidth. An SDX could do it easier - but we really need to prove the SDX can tolerate the radiation and recover from a hit. A reliable narrowband transponder is to be preferred over an unreliable wideband transponder :-) The original Eagle proposal, if memory serves me correctly 9it often does not) was to have a linear transponder and the SDX was goign to be an experiment on the 2 meter downlink, 50kHz wide or so, with a bypass at the IF so if it became unreliable we could still get engineering beacon data on that downlink. A coded S-band downlink is probably even better, though, based on AO-40 experience.

73,

Lyle KK7P

If technically feasible, I would shoot for 50 to 100 kHz. We shouldn't be aiming only at our current membership. A "fixed in space" satellite will gain many users that have not been interested in satellites in the past.

And, then there is the emergency communications capability we should consider. In fact, that needs to be our prime cause for doing this in the first place and our argument for raising money from government and other sources.

73,

Bill, W3XO

----- Original Message ----- From: "John B. Stephensen" [email protected] To: "Andrew Glasbrenner" [email protected]; "Bob McGwier" [email protected]; "'Bill Ress'" [email protected]; "'David Goncalves'" [email protected] Cc: "'AMSAT BoD'" [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 8:58 PM Subject: [eagle] Re: what is going on?, some technical content at last.

Assuming the average occupancy that I witnessed on AO-13, a 25 kHz wide linear transponder would work for the current membership, but I have no idea whether they would provide enough donations to fund it.

73,

John KD6OZH

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Glasbrenner" [email protected] To: "Bob McGwier" [email protected]; "'John B. Stephensen'" [email protected]; "'Bill Ress'" [email protected]; "'David Goncalves'" [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; "'AMSAT BoD'" [email protected] Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 11:20 UTC Subject: Re: [eagle] Re: what is going on?, some technical content at last.

...

Bob wrote:

...

There is an alternative to think about. I would not wait forever for the larger picture to come together, for the good of AMSAT and amateur radio. A likelihood assessment needs to be made regularly about the "Vision Thing" and the will power to change directions should be found if it needs to be done. We could put together a small, simple package and smaller than desirable antennas and give our users analog transponders on an Intelsat platform. This would require large antennas on the ground and would serve to make our current user base quite happy I am sure. If we do this, it should be the absolute dumbest, most bullet proof, impossible to destroy, dumber than rock, transponder without a single chance of failing in 300 years unless the rocket blows up or it is hit by a meteor. It would be a box with two connectors and a power plug going to the smallest possible CREDIBLE antennas. There has been an argument that this is very undesirable for the long term health of AMSAT, Inc. I made the argument in the open and have suffered regular personal threats as a result since from one very angry disgruntled member. I am sure it was the manner in which I presented the argument that caused the reaction so I am 99% to blame.

But this is clearly outside of the vision statement of AMSAT, but it would be a way forward. If we come in with very low mass, with little footprint and 50-100 w peak power requirements, and we look at the matrix of costs Intelsat gave us, I think we might be able to raise that amount from "amateur radio sources".

This idea has been floating around for some time now, but to see you suggest it is a powerful example of convergent thinking. I do not believe that it is an either/or situation. The ACP is a complex design, and developing and implementing it is going to be a long road, that frankly we may not have enough momentum to carry us down. A simple, SMALL linear transponder as you describe would serve as an intermediate step, allowing us to keep the organization alive, build the membership and hence the donation base, and blaze the trail to launching ACP.

One point of disagreement is that this intermediate step is, to me at least, clearly -inside- the mission statement, even moreso than the ACP. For those that have forgotten, here is the mission statement:

"AMSAT is a non-profit volunteer organization which designs, builds and operates experimental satellites and promotes space education. We work in partnership with government, industry, educational institutions and fellow amateur radio societies. We encourage technical and scientific innovation, and promote the training and development of skilled satellite and ground system designers and operators.

Our Vision is to deploy high earth orbit satellite systems that offer daily coverage by 2009 and continuous coverage by 2012. AMSAT will continue active participation in human space missions and support a stream of LEO satellites developed in cooperation with the educational community and other amateur satellite groups."

The intermediate step would immediately fulfill the continuous coverage part of the vision statement, and I think it has a much better chance of success by 2012, and certainly 2009, than does the ACP.

The decision to make this course correction certainly does have considerable benefits and risks, but I think it is one the BOD -and- the members should carefully consider, and if we go forward with it, the infighting and Monday morning quarterbacking needs to be left behind and a serious "get to the moon" effort be undertaken. We'll need 10 times the people soliciting donations as actually building the thing, but I do believe it's well within reason to be accomplished.

73, Drew KO4MA

---

Via the Eagle mailing list courtesy of AMSAT-NA [email protected] http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/eagle