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

[Personal]

Very sad news. The entire amateur radio community has suffered a huge loss. Deepest sympathies to his family.

John AG9D

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 27, 2014, at 9:10 PM, "JoAnne Maenpaa" <k9jkm at comcast.net> wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
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