[amsat-bb] AMSAT-NA

[Paul Stoetzer]

Ray,

We agree. Our partnerships with universities and other organizations over
the past several years have opened up that door to us. With the work
pioneered by Tony Monteiro and continued by Jerry Buxton, we obtained
fully-funded launches for three of the Fox-1 satellites through NASA's
CubeSat Launch Inititative. Additionally, the first two GOLF satellites
have also been selected to participate in that program. Securing seven
fully-funded launches for our satellites is no small feat. Jerry's hard
work on these CubeSat Launch Initiative proposals and his commitment to
maintaining excellent relationships with NASA and our university partners
has placed us in an excellent position.

Led by Jerry, along with Drew Glasbrenner, we are also partnering with
several universities to place amateur radio transponders on CubeSats that
are under development.The first of these satellites carrying an AMSAT
developed and built transponder resulting from these partnerships,
HuskySat-1, built at the University of Washington, will launch this fall.
Work is well underway with several other entities to place at least a dozen
more of these systems on university-built CubeSats over the next several
years.

In late June, the Board elected Frank Karnauskas, N1UW, as the Vice
President - Development charged with seeking out further grants and
partnerships. He brings a lot of knowledge and energy to this position and
already has a team of two individuals to help him with the grant-writing
process. The incumbent directors are well aware that we need to find
partnerships and funding from outside the world of amateur radio and we
have been working to improve in these areas by finding individuals with the
right sklll sets to address them. I note, for the record, that AMSAT is
running a modest surplus through the first six months of the year despite
large expenditures for GOLF and ARISS hardware development.

In addition to finding additional sources of revenue, we also need to
modernize some of our office and membership processes. We are currently
working with an IT contractor to modernize our decades-old membership
database and enable us to provide modern, digital services to our
membership, such as digital distribution of The AMSAT Journal.

Addressing deficiencies that date back 20+ years takes time, but I believe
we are on a path that will enable us to Keep Amateur Radio in Space for
another 50 years and beyond.

As you are also aware, beyond the issue of partnerships and revenue, we
also need to continue our work on regulatory matters. The issue of ITAR and
EAR is, of course, a big one. Last fall, the Board authorized the retention
of a law firm to advise us on these matters and we are nearing completion
of a policy to address ITAR and EAR matters that will open the door to
again work with other AMSAT organizations and entities abroad. We are also
concerned about orbital debris mitigation and amateur satellite licensing
issues with the FCC. I authored AMSAT's comments and reply comments to the
FCC on both small satellite licensing and orbital debris mitigation
rulemaking proposals and have also been working with the ARRL's Washington
counsel (an AMSAT life member) on these issues.

73,

Paul Stoetzer, N8HM
Executive Vice President
Member of the Board of Directors
AMSAT

On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 11:31 AM Ray Soifer via AMSAT-BB <amsat-bb at amsat.org>
wrote:

> I am not a candidate for the AMSAT BoD (been there, done that) nor am I
> endorsing or opposing anyone.  Most of you know me; if not, please see my
> QRZ.com page.  As the the then EVP, it was my fate to be Acting President
> during the failure and partial recovery of AO-40.
> AMSAT's basic problem is financial.  Universities and even high schools
> get NASA  up.money to build and launch Cubesats, while AMSAT's limited
> resources are slowly drying up.
>
> I don't have a solution, but I am not running for the BoD.  I urge those
> who are to put their solutions forward, not just their gripes.
> 73 Ray W2RS
> _______________________________________________
> Sent via AMSAT-BB at amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions
> expressed
> are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of
> AMSAT-NA.
> Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
> Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
>