[eagle] Re: [Bod] [Fwd: [CubeSat] Presentations online]

[AMSAT Director of Education]

Tom Clark, K3IO wrote:

> I wonder what representation we had at last week's (19-21 April) Cubesat 
> Developers Conference in Huntington Beach? 

Unfortunately, I was not able to be there, as it occured during the last 
week of classes at my college. Hopefully, by next year I will be 
re-retired, and able to attend.

>  most of the satellites use amateur 2M/70cm 
> resources, but few even mention ham radio.

I am under the impression that most of the CubeSat projects have ham 
mentors.  I would hope that they would be able to impress upon the folks 
at their respective schools the importance of ham radio to the big 
picture.  We need to get those folks together at some point (maybe at 
the Space Symposium), and have a session on how best to achieve their 
ancillary duties, beyond the technical (which they already do quite well).

> Nowhere did I note a single reference to AMSAT or IARU. IMHO, it looks 
> like we have failed to get our message thru to these folks.

Tom is right.  It's not enough to just do good tech, or good education. 
  We need to do better PR!  Unfortunately, most of us are so focused 
upon our particular niche that we tend to overlook this aspect of our 
duties (and I am as guilty as anyone in this regard).  We should 
consider adopting ARRL's model, and have public relations volunteers to 
whom we techies feed our reports, who will then wave our flag for us in 
public.

73,  Paul

-- 
Dr. H. Paul Shuch, N6TX
AMSAT Director of Education
n6tx at amsat.org    www.qsl.net/n6tx
Grid Square  FN11lh