[amsat-bb] Re: Eagle Ground Station Pak

[Paul Williamson]

At 8:46 PM -0400 10/7/06, sco at sco-inc.com wrote:
>Does anyone have any idea what will be in the proposed Eagle Ground
>Station package that has been proposed to be provided from Amsat?

In short, no, nobody has any concrete idea yet. It's just an 
intention at this point.

What's completely clear is that a digital solution for accessing the 
ACP (Advanced Communication Package) would have to be made available 
to users. It's not something most people would be able to homebrew 
and there's no off-the-shelf equipment for it. So at least that 
unique part of the system would have to be made available. There's an 
explicit goal that this device be made affordable. Beyond that, the 
details are yet to be designed.

I would hope to see that any other unusual or difficult-to-obtain 
system component would also be made available. The dual-band feed you 
mentioned would be a good example.

It might turn out to be feasible to build an antenna that requires no 
mechanical positioning. A phased array of some sort, presumably. If 
we come up with a good solution for that, I expect it would also be 
made available through AMSAT.

73  -Paul
kb5mu at amsat.org
from the Space Symposium