> cultural change for AMSAT. Voice communications > would no longer be the primary motivation > or justification for a project; it would merely > be a nice side-effect.
I believe the number 1 thing we should be working on is "Universal Amateur Radio Text Messaging". The goal is to be able to text message any ham anywhere, anytime using any device using only his call. I have counted over TWO dozen existing text messaging capabilities in Ham radio and the problem is, that few of them are cross connected or integrated, yet we could do it easily if we just took it on as the big picture! See www.aprs.org/aprs-messaging.html APRS has had the above local and global terrestrial and satellite text messaging between mobiles and handhelds for over a decade, now cellphones and blackberry's and Iphones are being integrated. There are 300,000 older DTMF Text Paging ham HT's out there from the 90's that could be integrated. There are millions of surplus text pagers going to the landfills... Even the shack-potatos who use Echolink have text messaging while on-line... I want to extend that to the mobiles too. And a satellite transponder to support this is now small enough to fit in HALF of a cubesat. 10 such cubesats would extend this existing network to every foot on earth at any time. Oh, and of course, once you can text message anytime, anywhere, to any ham on any device, then you can QSY to voice on something like Echolink or IRLP the phone. But Universal Amatuer Radio Text messaging should be our immediate goal, instead of dozens of isolated systems only serving their own users within their own feifdoms. We have 6000 frequencies below UHF, and by that same token, 6000-to-1 ways not to find each other. Universal Text messaging if for no other purpose than announcing our immediate monitoring frequency is a very powerful aid to communications. APRS now automatically not only includes your position, but also your FREQ in every packet, making human-to-human contact fruitful. www.aprs.org/localinfo.html THis includes showing you on your mobile display the freq, tone, and location of nearby EchoLink and IRLP nodes wherever you go. AND where implemented, the location, freq and instantaneous DOppler of any satellites in view show up on your Mobile heads-up display. Making Mobile operation of the FM sateliltes easy. Bob, WB4APR _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. 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
