[amsat-bb] Re: presentation for hamfest

[Nate Duehr]

Wayne Estes wrote:

> I'm amused at your presumption that all hams have a mobile ham radio and 
>   spend a great deal of time in their car.
> 
> Wayne Estes W9AE
> Oakland, Oregon, USA, CN83ik

This may be somewhat true information from Wayne...

The manufacturers pushing lots and lots of cheap HT's has made our 
repeater association consider ideas for beefing up receiver coverage 
(voting) because lots and lots of hams don't "get it" anymore that 5W 
from 20+ miles away just isn't much signal left on VHF/UHF/etc... and 
they also see the glossy ads of people talking long distances, etc... 
and want the HT to act like their cellphone.

So right now, the project is ... find a way to do all of this voting 
digitally...

Analog voters and links are a HUGE pain.  We're busy with some other 
things right now, but perhaps the techies will get some "tinker time" 
with some of our ideas this summer...

I only shared, because it relates to Wayne's comments.  If I had to 
guess, I'd say the most active *repeater* users (those we're targeting 
to try out FM birds) right now, ALL start with HT's... and take a while 
to "upgrade" to permanently-installed high-power mobiles.

If the repeater groups naturally gravitate toward "solutions" for the HT 
users... the AMSAT folks will also see less and less folks with 
high-power FM rigs... (that's where my rambling comment really leads 
here...)

Nate WY0X