Hello David, Rick and Paul,
First, to Rick, many thanks for your kind reception to my satellite talk on Thursday evening. The feedback I've since received has been most positive, so apparently nobody fell asleep during my presentation!
And to David, with this email I'm pulling Paul Stoetzer, our current AMSAT Executive Vice President into the conversation regarding the satellite project you are involved with at the University of Western Ontario (UWO).
As I noted during our discussions on Thursday evening, for the last few years, AMSAT has been offering a fully tested cubesat transponder suite to those groups interested in building and launching "amateur radio qualified" experiments into earth orbit. Also, at one time, AMSAT and a group in Canada were in conversations about negotiating a collaborative agreement so as to work together on satellite projects of mutual interest. However, as I'm now well out of the loop as to the current status of that process, I believe it would still be in both group's mutual interest to continue pursuing such an agreement, particularly now that the US FCC's licensing requirements as regards orbital debris mitigation have become far more stringent than in the past.
Paul, I would
very much appreciate you putting David McCarter (
ve3gso@gmail.com)...the London Amateur Radio Club's contact with the group at UWO who are in the process of assembling their cubesat... into contact with the appropriate regulatory and/or engineering folks at AMSAT so as to possibly explore these cooperative ideas further.
73,
Keith Baker
KB1SF / VA3KSF
Past President
Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT)