[amsat-bb] Major Grant for Open Source Amateur Radio Satellite Service Work

[Michelle Thompson]

I'm very happy to announce that two grants have been made for open source
amateur radio satellite work. This closes out an extraordinarily successful
summer of regulatory progress, published designs, community development,
and fundraising.

All of this work directly benefits AMSAT.

It benefits AMSAT regardless of whether it's ignored in the short term,
attacked, ridiculed, or stolen.

One of the new grants, for $4200, is for AmbaSat-inspired nanosat microwave
designs. These lightweight designs will be useful for high-altitude
balloons as well as space. Intended for University level education, this
project will produce repeatable and manufacturable open source designs.

The other grant is for $507,020. It is for the second phase of engineering
work for the complete digital ground station and payload design.

This grant took 14 months of very hard work to obtain.

All are welcome to participate. All work is published in a way that makes
it accessible to the general public at no cost, with standard licensing and
full compliance with all regulations.

A third grant, for Rent-a-GEO, is still under review. You can look back
through the archives to find out more about that proposal.

AMSAT leaders were informed of these grant applications. AMSAT was informed
and invited to be part of the Commodity Jurisdiction Request, in writing,
multiple times.

AMSAT members were invited to contribute, review, participate, comment, and
critique the grant proposal. Many members did. The process of writing the
grants has been open, with workshops at major amateur events, recruitment
of a committee from a diverse technical background, forum presentations,
paper presentations, hardware experiments, work carried out on a public
mailing list, and so on.

There were at least six significant re-writes based on unflinching feedback
from the community, ARDC technical review board, and committee members.

That is what "very hard work" means.

Before the transponder grant was awarded, ORI board offered a technical
support contract that would share all funds with AMSAT/ARISS/AREx. As long
as the work was mutually beneficial, the funds would be openly available to
AREx.

That contract can be found here:
https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/blob/master/Papers_Articles_Presentations/Articles_and_Announcements/AREx-Support-Contract-July-2020.pdf

This was presented as a starting point draft, open to negotiation and
tailoring.

However, it was declined without an explanation.

This is not the only negative response to fundraising and regulatory work
from AMSAT.

Attacks against the landmark Commodity Jurisdiction Request, personal
attacks by leadership on anyone associated with this grant, and the open
ridicule of the previous YASME, ARRL Foundation, and ARDC grants seem to be
what a bit more than half of members want. That is certainly what AMSAT
leadership is currently providing.

Calling successful engineers that have dozens of projects in space "liars"
and "grifters", and shrieking that this grant is going to be "completely
wasted" by an AMSAT member society while sharing photos of cash on fire on
social media, is not a great look for the Executive Vice President of
AMSAT.

Ridiculing a desperately needed Final Determination letter from the State
Department as a "self-indulgent publicity stunt" is a shockingly stupid
thing for the VP of Engineering to publicly state.

Rejecting written offers of six-figure fundraising support, and rejecting
dozens of competent volunteer recruits' free labor, seems kind of dumb to
me.

AMSAT would be in great shape if it took advantage of the gifts of time,
talent, and treasure that have been consistently and freely offered.
Instead, we have a raft of resignations, continued silence, and ugly memes.

In looking at the low numbers of AMSAT voters, it may seem kind of silly to
keep showing up with seriously needed solutions (ITAR/EAR, several
world's-first technical advancements, major funds) when they are rejected
so clumsily. However, just because it seems silly now, does not mean it is
wrong to keep trying.

Nearly half of voters wanted open source and a return to technical
leadership this year. This is a huge increase looking at the past three
years (from zero!) and is extremely good news.

Unfortunately, this time around, non-technical and litigious leadership
managed to keep their seats. However, the trend is clear, the regulatory
framework has changed, and open source work is rapidly leapfrogging opaque,
authoritarian, and exclusionary mindsets. There is a very bright future
unfolding.

Do you want to make a difference? Consider running for the board. The time
to start preparing for 2021 is now. It's well worth the effort and time. If
I can make the difference that I have in the past year, in terms of
regulatory work, technical work, and fundraising, just imagine what you can
do! There has never been a better time to get into amateur microwave,
digital design, FPGAs, and space.

-Michelle W5NYV