Amateur Radio Satellite Echo In Orbit

Rob Carr writes "According to a bulletin posted on the ARRL web site, the amateur satellite currently called AO-Echo has reached orbit. Ground controllers have already made contact once with the satellite, although it will be some time before the satellite is ready for general amateur radio operator use. Multiple communication modes will be available on this microsat, including FM, PSK31, and SSB. More information can be found on the AmSat web site."

Comments

Re:Amateur radio == free radio?

[mschiller]

Well Hams (Amateur Radio Operators) often have quite a few people that are skilled in Radio Direction Finding. If you do nasty things to a Ham Satellite, I assure you the local ham club will be out in force looking for you. They WILL find you, and when they do I assure you that there will be plenty of notes to the local Official Observer and the FCC. Once the local observer is aware of the situation and can prove that it's you his/her note to the FCC will hold considerable weight and will result in action. Plus enough folks will probably decide to take things into their own hands, then you're life will be unpleasant anyway..

It's one thing when Hams or non hams illegally transmitting on Ham bands interfere with local repeaters or HF frequencies. Here we can work around it. But the satellites are a very expensive limited resource, there are enough folks who care deeply about it that you won't be able to get away with interfering, in a illegal way, for long...

Remember, you can't do anything wirelessly without being trackable! Trust me on this one. You may encrypt things or obscure things, but a diligent Radio Direction Finding team will hunt you down and find your physical transmitting location.

Now if you meant the US Government themselves would cause interference on Ham Satelites, I think that's pretty unlikely. But if it did happen, Ham's might find out the Government was doing it, but there isn't much they could do about it. If it was a foreign national government, the U.S. would probably be willing to intercede since Ham radio is protected by International Treaty, of which 99+% of the world is party to. Although in the end it would just be a nice diplomatic letter from, at best, the Secretary of State. So I guess a government could ignore it, but I don't see why any sane government would risk an international incident over something as silly as Ham Radio.

Matthew Schiller, KD6BWE

What, no 200 mile 802.11g link?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Neat idea- but I would have included some sort of packet-switched rather than frequency-switched bounce network as well. Of course, I'm more software than hardware- for all I know one of these frequencies is in the 2.4Ghz band....