[amsat-bb] Re: old satellites

[MM]

There have been cases in the past, where Old commercial satellites have been assigned other light duties. 
Example, a marginally functional satellite was assigned free telephone status for the remote island Pitcairn.  

so it may be possible to find some other satellites that still have working transponders which are not good enough for profit but could still be used by hams.  Example, if the sat was designed as a Geo sat and it's Fuel runs out, it will drift out of its parking space.  The transponders still work but it can not be used since its Moving and its not in its assigned parking space.
we should not only check out the Geo Sats, but also Tumbling Iridium sats too.

Any one have contacts are Huges or one of the other satellite companies?


wf1f.



--- On Thu, 3/12/09, w7lrd at comcast.net <w7lrd at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: w7lrd at comcast.net <w7lrd at comcast.net>
> Subject: [amsat-bb]  old satellites
> To: amsat-bb at amsat.org
> Date: Thursday, March 12, 2009, 12:24 AM
> Hello
> I believe this subject has been kicked around on this BB
> before.  It did generate some creative thinking.  Given  all
> the satellites up there and all the varied uses of them,
> eventually some of them get compromised for whatever reason.
>  Is there any way any of these old relics can be
> reprogramed, used or otherwise "adjusted" to suit
> us?  We don't need a real good S/N  ratio to make us
> happy, and we are pretty good at cobbling together whatever
> we want.  We have some very informed and smart people on
> this BB who know.
> 73 Bob W7LRD
> Seattle
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