10. Rub shoulders with 25,000 of your best friends at the largest hamfest in the United States, including six of the seven AMSAT Directors and all of the AMSAT senior officers.
9. Find out how to organize a contact with the astronauts on the International Space Station for your local school or youth group from our Education and ARISS experts.
AMSAT has received word from the family of Tony Monteiro, AA2TX that a
service for Tony will be held on Saturday, April 26th at 4:00 PM at the North
Parish of North Andover Unitarian Universalist Church, 190 Academy Road, North
Andover, MA 01845. During the service there will be an opportunities for people
to share their “Tony stories”. For individuals wishing to share their stories
via e-mail, they should be sent to [email protected]. They will be read
at the service.
AMSAT VP-Engineering and Board of Directors Member Tony Monteiro of North Andover, MA passed away on March 26, 2014 at age 55 from cancer. More details on his life and passing may be found here and in the Lowell Eagle-Tribune.
The eighth annual AMSAT/TAPR Banquet will be held on Friday night, May 16. This dinner is always a highlight of the AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corp.) and TAPR (Tucson Amateur Packet Radio) activities during the Dayton Hamvention.
This year’s speaker will be Dr. Tom Clark, K3IO, “Sixty Years a Slave (to Amateur Radio).”
Tom received his Ph.D. in Astro-Geophysics from the University of Colorado, served as Chief of the Astronomy Branch at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, was a Senior Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, has been active in both AMSAT and TAPR, and holds an Extra Class license. Along with Bob McGwier, N4HY he developed the first amateur DSP hardware, including a number of modems. He developed the uplink receivers and the spacecraft LAN architecture used on all the Microsats (Oscars 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27 and 31). Tom was inducted into the initial class of CQ Magazine’s Amateur Radio Hall of Fame in 2001. Professionally, he is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Society and the International Association of Geodesy. In 2005 he was the first non-Russian to be awarded the Special Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences for his contributions to the international Very Long Baseline Interferometry network.
In a special AMSAT Board of Directors meeting held via GoToMeeting on Tuesday, April 1st, the board unanimously approved the selection of Jerry Buxton, N0JY of Granbury, TX as AMSAT VP-Engineering. Jerry replaces Tony Monteiro, AA2TX who passed away on March 26th.
Given the significance of completing Fox-1 for delivery on time later this year, the Board recognized that the Fox Program must continue under leadership that is focused on completing AMSAT’s latest satellite. Selecting a new VP-Engineering is an important step towards maintaining the momentum that was developed under Tony’s leadership and to avoid creating an engineering leadership vacuum as work continues on the satellite. The Engineering Team deserves to have the new leadership identified in order to be in position to make the appropriate engineering decisions.