[amsat-bb] Re: satellite activity and future sats...

[Tony Langdon]

At 12:47 AM 9/7/2012, Thomas Doyle wrote:
>Hi -
>
>Thanks so much for your post. Many of us have been in this so long we
>have completely lost touch with the needs of the new ham. You have
>described the greatest needs in the sat hobby. Unfortunately we are
>heading in a direction where we are suppose to create materials to
>educate high school youth when we do not have even basic materials to
>educate our own new sat users. Many old timers will say there is lots
>of material out there and there is but it is very basic. There are
>hundreds of great videos showing how to wave an Arrow antenna around
>and make a contact but beyond that - not much. Unfortunately the
>learning curve gets very steep very fast. Thanks again for taking the
>time to share your insights. We need someone like you on the board.

As someone who has written an introductory article or two myself, I 
am inclined to agree.  There is a lot of material that shows how easy 
it is to work your first satellite, but not a lot of "where to go 
from here".  What would be nice is a tutorial which starts at working 
your first FM sat with a HT and portable antenna, then goes through 
from there in stages right through to fully automated stations 
capable of working a future HEO or fully automated operation on 
pacsats, among other things.

73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL
http://vkradio.com