[amsat-bb] ANS-086 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin - Tony Monteiro, AA2TX SK

[JoAnne Maenpaa]

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-086.01
AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin - Tony Monteiro, AA2TX SK

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 086.01
>From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
March 27, 2014
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-086.01

Anthony "Tony" J. Monteiro, AA2TX (SK)

AMSAT VP-Engineering and Board Member Anthony J. Monteiro, AA2TX of 
North Andover, MA died on Wednesday morning, March 26, 2014 while 
hospitalized in Boston, MA from cancer. He was 55.  He is survived 
by his wife, Mary Lou and daughter, Veronica, a college freshman.

Tony was first licensed in 1973 as a Novice and subsequently held an 
Extra Class Amateur Radio License. An avid operator, he described his
first contact in an AMSAT BoD Candidate's Statement in 2011: "I earned

my novice ticket in 1973 and made my first ham radio contact with a 
transmitter made from parts out of an old TV set. A Heathkit HR-10B 
receiver and a 65-foot piece of wire strung out of a window for an 
antenna made up the rest of my station, which was pretty modest even 
by 1973 standards! Even so, I will never forget the thrill of my very 
first contact."

His interest in amateur radio and electronics led him to earn a BS 
in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University and a MS in Com-
puter Science from Stanford University. His professional career 
started at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey developing network man-
agement systems and then consumer products. After working at several 
startup companies, Tony landed at Cisco Systems where he managed 
the development of ADSL, voice over packet, and content networking 
products. He retired from industry in 2002 and focused his efforts 
working on satellite projects.

Tony joined AMSAT in 1994 and started working the satellites. He 
earned ARRL VHF/UHF Century Club-Satellite #58 and worked 49 states 
(only Hawaii was not logged) as well. Tony worked a number of stations

while he commuted along the I-495 corridor outside Boston. Many will 
remember working him through AO-40 as he utilized his "cardboard 
box horn antenna."  Tony led a workshop at the 2003 AMSAT Space 
Symposium where students built similar antennas, demonstrating the 
ease in which one could build a 2.4 GHz S-band antenna to receive 
the AO-40 downlink.

Additional technical contributions to the amateur satellite com-
munity that Tony made included "InstantTune Automatic Radio Tuning" 
software, "A Simple Desense Filter for Echo", and several extremely 
low cost projects such as "A $5 Mode V/S Adapter using a Sub-Harmonic 
Mixer". AMSAT-UK currently offers a 70 CM Parasitic Lindenblad antenna

based upon his design.

Tony also played a significant role in space-based hardware develop-
ment. He collaborated on the NO-60 satellite. As AMSAT's VP-Engineer-
ing, he served as the software designer for the SDX (Software Defined 
Transponder) on ARISSat-1/Kedr that was deployed from the Inter-
national Space Station by Russian Cosmonauts during a space walk in 
August 2011. Tony led the Fox-1 Engineering Team from inception in 
2009 and led AMSAT's efforts to apply for acceptance of Fox-1 in 
the NASA Education Launch of NanoSat (ELaNA) in 2011 and Fox-1B in 
2012. He established relationships with several universities to 
secure scientific payloads for Fox-1 and Fox-1B, including student 
experiments. 

A strong proponent of student involvement in satellite projects, 
Tony served as coordinator of AMSAT Engineering relationships with 
SUNY-Binghamton, Penn State-Erie, Virginia Tech, and Rochester 
Institute of Technology where students developed new technologies 
to be applied in future AMSAT spacecraft as "Capstone" projects. 
These projects, such as the development of storage capacitors to 
replace batteries developed by SUNY-Binghamton, provided student 
experiences that will ultimately be flown in space. The AMSAT 
JOURNAL in recent years featured several articles concerning these 
projects.

Tony was elected to the AMSAT Board of Directors in 2011 following 
service for one year as a BoD alternate. Him wise counsel and focus 
on finding ways to make it affordable for AMSAT to fly amateur radio 
systems in space resulted in several innovative approaches. It was 
Tony that convinced the NASA ELaNA program to modify their qualifi-
cation criteria to add "not for profits" to those that could apply 
for launch grants. It was Tony that met with universities that were 
looking for ways to fly their payloads but didn't have the experience 
to build satellites, encouraging collaboration that would benefit 
both AMSAT and the university. 

Tony's approach to participation in the AMSAT Leadership Team reflect-
ed his approach to life. Whenever he had a thought to share with the 
entire AMSAT Board of Directors and/or Senior Officers via e-mail, he 
always started with "Dear Friends". As AMSAT VP-Operations Drew Glas-
brenner, KO4MA noted, "I always admired how he reminded me we were 
all friends despite whatever argument was raging."

Arrangements for a service for Tony will be announced at a later 
date. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to 
Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT), 850 Sligo Avenue, Suite 600, 
Silver Spring, MD 20910. 

Barry A. Baines, WD4ASW 
President-Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT)

[ANS thanks AMSAT President Barry Baines, WD4ASW for the above
information]

/EX