[amsat-bb] Re: Fw: Response to my request of information about EduSat fromGAUSS team in Rome: Re: [CubeSat] Edusat operative or failure

[don]

Hi Trevor,
And thanks to Domenico, Sil, and the others who were concerned enough to 
post about"Edusat".

A little background: I hardly ever "use" the amateur sats nowadays, time 
is short and work is long! However whenever a new sat goes up I at least 
try to get the telemetry from it, usually with some sort of semi 
automated system, or by real tune and capture when I'm in the shack.
OK, its probably not what most on the list would call "operation", but 
it keeps the grey cells ticking over.

Any way, the list came up with "edusat" being launched, in orbit, and 
transmitting. Great I thought, something new to track and decode.

Well as you would do, I tried to find the Keps. Ok got them, bit 
difficult but found them. Looked for the downlink freq's.......yeah right!
Looked for the data format yeah right!
Looked for the website.......still looking!
posted to this forum, got a couple of replies from the "owner" that lead 
me to the FCC website where I discovered that "edusat" is in actuality a 
commercial enterprise that has some how got both 2 metre and 70 cm 
freq's allocated by someone....who and how?
It is not an "amateur satellite service" satellite in the generally 
accepted sense, neither does it comply with the IARU definition of an 
amateur satellite service sat.
So WHY is it being snake oiled as an "Amsat", using (in particular) 2 
metre freqs ? I fully understand the need to protect a command system 
uplink freq, which is usually done with encryption of the commands 
rather than obfuscation of the freq used.....at least that's the 
standard technique for our terrestrial systems.
I could go on and on, but my head is already bloodied by beating against 
a brick wall, Maybe, just maybe someone on the list could set something 
rolling to to stop this sort of rort of amateur freqs happening again.
Up to the list,Its our valuable spectrum "they" are carefully and 
cunningly hijacking.

That was the reason for my original post, to try and point out the 
erosion of our freq's by folk who are far from friendly to ham radio.

Don,
      ZL1THO