Brattstrom: Where are the Amateurs?
Ted Brattstrom, NH6YK is an amateur operator in Honolulu, HI, and holds an Advanced class license from the FCC.
Sponsorship itself isn't bad, after all, UoS, KIT, Weber and the like, "sponsor" satellites. However, in the case of SwatchSAT, it seems like unlicensed individuals will be making comments from a satellite operating in the frequecies allocated to the Amateur Satellite Service / Amateur Radio Service from a country where there are no 3rd party agreements and these comments are in support of a for-profit corporate entity.
Where are the Amateurs?
Is there is Swatch ARC? Are they covered under the R0MIR club license? What callsign will be attached to this transmitter? Both the Russians who seemed to have scammed this and the Swatch Co. who has fallen for this need to ponder the ramifications.
For the rest of us; here is an alternate scenario to contemplate:
"PizzaSat" - where PizzaHouse (If there IS a "PizzaHouse", I apologize) sponsors a satellite in the 2M band and sends down messages about the joys of eating pizza. Perhaps the satellite doesn't even mention PizzaHouse.
There will be a net-prescence about the satellite - on www.pizzahousesat.com. Would this be a positive use of the amateur satellite service as well as fulfill the purpose of Amateur Radio??? Remember, the people of PizzaHouse are not hams, they are just paying money for a stunt that they see is good PR, makes them look Hi-Tech, and is not all that expensive. Besides, the frequency is listened to by a bunch of pizza-eating techies.
How about RepublicanSAT, DemocratSAT, NRASAT, KKKSAT, 700ClubSAT, 666SAT or your group of your choice or fear??? Imagine, CondomSAT, to promote birth control around the world. Though it is hard to imagine the various American political parties paying the Russians for a ride, and unlikely that it would get lofted on an American rocket.
How does this compare to the initial plan for DOVE - DO17?
DOVE was planned as an amateur radio satellite that would have digital voice recordings of student comments about peace as well as telemetry about spacecraft conditions for study by students and amateurs.
It was launched on an Ariane and "sponsored" by AMSAT-Brazil. It never got to the voice recording stage, though a lot of data used by students came down, and there were several times when the digitalker said "This is DOVE in Space" Note the difference, subtle to some, this was not commercial! No one is selling peace.... (funny how they sell war though.... OK, back on track!)
For another fiasco remember SARA - 145.987 (I think it was...) a French Amateur Radio Astronomy group managed to get a lift. It would have been pretty cool to collect the data and work with it, but the group just put the satellite in the ham band, without talking with amateurs, though there may have been an amateur in the group... and never published data on how to use the telemetry or it's encoding (though I think it is ASCII).
Possible Solutions -
1 - Swatch sponsors an Amateur radio satellite, allowing licensed amateurs to uplink messages...
2 - Swatch quickly forms the Swatch ARC - gets a callsign - has one of the messages include their amateur radio callsign - then, if Swiss/Russian rules allow them, uploads third party messages.
3 - Swatch / Russia re-crystals the transmitter for a non-Amateur band - I'd suggest between 88 and 108 MHz, as many people would be able to recieve it, and it is in the FM commercial broadcast band. (What the ITU rules say about it is another thing, but I'm not certain that those are being paid attention to anyway).
Other bands may include 137 MHz (Meteorological satellite downlinks) - 143.625, the frequency that is used for official MIR comms - 148-150 MHz, assorted military ground, MARS and geodetic satellites.
4 - Amateurs activly solicit new sponsors for amateur radio advertising satellites. CasioSAT, RolexSAT, TimexSAT come to mind right off.
5 - We ignore it....
a. MIR will be deorbited in the next few months anyway, no AMSAT group is going to build another satellite for the Russians, and it is unlikely that small sats will be hand launched from ISS.
b. Hey, commercial interests aren't that bad, look what they did to the Internet.... (remember when we called it spam when you posted the same message to more than a couple of newsgroups? perish the thought that it would come to your e-mail... if someone posted something that looked like it was a "commercial for sale" rather than a personal belonging, they were soundly berated. So much for nostalgia.
6 - we boycott Swatch.... yeah? how many of you already Have a Swatch??? are you likely to buy one anyway?
7 - we boycott Beatnik (SwatchSAT).... don't tell anyone, delete the keps, keep it a secret...
8 - we boycott the Russians.... yeah, right.....
As for me, I don't think that unlicensed, non-amateur, commercial communications belongs in the amateur bands.
Aloha - Ted - NH6YK - NH4/NH6YK - KC6YK
PS - Hey, I've got it!! Why does it have to be on a satellite? Why not just put it up as a recording on 2M transmitters on high mountains in Europe, the Americas etc? Then it wouldn't run out of batteries or re-enter... Would THAT be an OK use of the amateur bands??? Hello PizzaBeacon(TM).