[amsat-bb] Re: FD Mess

[Gary "Joe" Mayfield]

Diane,

     	I'm not sure if I agree, but I am very willing to discuss.  In past
years I have taken many flames for demonstrating satellites to scouts and
other visitors at our site because it always resulted in the one contact
rule being broken.  This year I had the satellite gear operational for maybe
10 minutes to assemble the Arrow, connect the handheld, make the contact,
disassemble the Arrow and put it all away.

	It was easy, but not much of a demonstration.  The 100 point bonus
was the only reason for our doing it.  Unless you have lots of folks at your
Field Day site with nothing to do, there is no real reward to having an
OSCAR station.

	This is coming from someone who would still call themselves a
satellite enthusiast.

73,
Joe kk0sd

-----Original Message-----
From: amsat-bb-bounces at amsat.org [mailto:amsat-bb-bounces at amsat.org] On
Behalf Of Diane Bruce
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 4:19 PM
To: wa4hfn at comcast.net
Cc: AMSAT
Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: FD Mess

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 03:13:34PM +0000, wa4hfn at comcast.net wrote:
> It took me 5 satellite passes before I could make 1 contact There were too
many ops making what sounded like HI POWER multi contacts .This should not
have happened. Maybe someone with good writting skills could send the ARRL
world above 50 an artical on how to work the birds during FD
> WA4HFN em55  Damon

I know I am going to get hate mail again. I just know it. But here goes.
I've been quietly suggesting that we should _not_ be encouraging sat use
during field day, furthermore we probably should consider turning them
off during field day to stop this.

Now hear me out before you hit that reply key. Field day operators
are interested in those bonus points, we (amsat) are interested in
promoting amateur radio sat operations. How many of these field day
operations actually result in new satellite operators? Where are the
surveys, stats? Does the extra massive battery use of our sats justify
the PR? Keep in mind the state of AO-51 and FO-29.

Am I the only one? I'd be interested in a non-flame war discussion.

- 73 Diane VA3DB
-- 
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
  Why leave money to our children if we don't leave them the Earth?
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