Personally, if anyone wants to control who uses a satellite, then make the satellite digital and give each participant a digital code (which can be filtered later). Include a list of acceptable usage with it. If that person violates the acceptable usage then revoke his digital code and he is gone forever. Hmmmmm.... satellite moderation, just like what was tried here on the -bb a few years back when flames and flame throwers got a little out of hand. We received rules of use and if you violate them, you were banned from the -bb.
I can also remember many years ago in so-35, uo-14 days, there was a ham that used to have conversations with his xyl on many of the passes. Turned out.... he was in South America working as a missionary and he thought he was talking on a really quiet simplex frequency (the satellite uplink). After days and days of listening, we finally caught a call sign. I wrote him a letter and explained that we were all listening to the two of them and if he could QSY. Not a problem, within a week he was gone and in about another week, he had written me saying he did not know he was interfering with the satellite. There really is no solution to a satellite that uses a particular uplink frequency to keep those that use the simplex frequency or are actually trying to make a satellite contact and use poor operating practices. After all, when P5/4L4FN was operating from North Korea, there were many that made dozens of HF SSB contacts with him when one was enough to give them the rarest of all DX. There were also many pirates jamming the frequencies and a real mess. I know this first hand as I am the QSL manager. Satellites are no different from rare DX, everyone wants a piece of it and they want it now. As we are trying to get more and more hams interested in the satellites, we are going to simply have more trying to use the same space. One solution is for the experienced satellite operators to move from the single channel FM satellites over to the SSB birds. 73...bruce -- Bruce Paige, KK5DO AMSAT Director Contests and Awards ARRL Awards Manager (WAS, 5BWAS, VUCC), VE Houston AMSAT Net - Wed 0100z on Echolink - Conference *AMSAT* Also live streaming MP3 at http://www.amsatnet.com Podcast at http://www.amsatnet.com/podcast.xml or iTunes Latest satellite news on the ARRL Audio News http://www.arrl.org AMSAT on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/amsat _______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
