Open letter to the amateur community
Dear editors, Loop readers, list readers, and assorted amateur friends,
Over the past week I have received an incredible response to my query in the Hudson Division's Hudson Loop newsletter about a curious advertisement on the Swatch web-site. To help advertise their new brand of "Swatch time" watches, they appeared to be launching a satellite which would broadcast the voice messages of web readers into space and back to earth over radio on the frequencies from 145.800 to 146.000 MHz.
Thanks to the excellent researching skills of Stephan Anderman, K2SMA, and Rick Lindquist, N1RL, I've discovered that Swatch in cooperation with the Russian space authorities have decided to use the two meter Amateur band for direct advertising via the "Beatnik" satellite (a mini-Sputnik and AMSAT-FR project formerly to be known as RS-19) across the entire world.
According to AMSAT-France, during the construction of the satellite, the Russian space center had made a separate commercial contract with the Swatch watch company to put its messages on the satellite. This was done in spite of AMSAT objections and contractual agreements with them not to put commercial advertising content in the digital messages. AMSAT-FR couldn't back out of their own contract and had to forward the parts on to the space center.
Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, is doing his best to crack down on unlicensed and unbecoming operations within the jurisdiction of the FCC, but soon an egregious violation of the non-commercial status of amateur radio will begin taking place just a few miles above our heads when our two meter band is filled with advertisements for the latest Swatch watches.
Bernard Pidoux, F6BVP, writes that we should do our best to ignore the satellite and not do anything to assist Swatch, such as tracking and publishing the Keplerian elements of this rogue mini-sat. I completely agree, but I believe it's necessary to go even further than that.
Just as we've successfully done in response to Little LEOs and APCO proposals in the past, it's time for amateur operators around the world to let Swatch AG and the Russian space program know just how precious our bands are to us.
The first step is a comprehensive boycott of Swatch products. If you were considering the purchase of a Swatch watch for you or someone else, please take a moment to consider some of the other watch manufacturers who are not stealing away ham frequencies.
Next is to write a letter off to the Swatch company explaining why you made your purchase decision away from their products, and how you feel about this intrusion on the amateur bands. Use this address from their web-site registration as a starting point. If anyone knows the name of particular individuals within Swatch that the letters could be personally addressed to, please let me know.
Swatch AG
Jakob-Stampfli-Strasse 94
2504 Bienne
CH
As I understand it, the Russian space center will be able to upload voice data in ten message batches, so it's possible that under pressure from Swatch, they could "pull" these commercial advertisements off the ham bands at any time during the 30 day life, even while the satellite is still operational. This is all the more reason to make it clear to Swatch how strongly the amateur community feels about this issue right now!
Also, if you come across any amateur's page this month containing the Keplerian data or any mention of the Sputnik-99, let them know what Swatch is doing and encourage them to remove them as soon as possible.
I'll be maintaining a web site concerning the latest news in this problem at http://rob.carlson.org/swatch-protest, which will start with this letter. More news will be posted here and placed on the web site as I hear about it. If you have any information, please feel free to e-mail me at rcarls2@umbc.edu or kc2aei@amsat.org, or call me at (410) 455-3192 at any time.
Please forward this message as necessary so that we can inform as many amateur operators worldwide as possible about this problem.
73 and good luck,
Rob Carlson, KC2AEI
rcarls2@umbc.edu