Symposium Author's Guide, 2010 Edition

Thank you for preparing a paper for the AMSAT Symposium. Attached 
are a few guidelines to help you prepare your paper for publication 
in the symposium proceedings. 

The AMSAT Symposium Proceedings is not a peer-reviewed scientific 
journal and authors will not be held to that standard, however the 
quality of your work will reflect on AMSAT's reputation. You have 
no idea whose desk the proceedings may end up on. AMSAT is counting 
on you to make a good impression and show our best professional face. 

Authors assume full responsibility for the accuracy of their papers. 
The Symposium Proceedings Committe will try to read all of the papers 
but there are many of you and only a couple of us, so the quality of 
your paper is mostly up to you. It is primarily your responsibility 
to catch errors of spelling, grammar, math and science. Use the spell 
checker but don't rely on it, because many things can get buy a spell
checker. Know the correct use of "affect" and "effect", "discrete" 
and "discreet", "due" and "do". 

Authors should use the SI (metric) system of units unless they are 
describing workbench construction projects, where traditional units 
are still common (at least on American workbenches). Don't express 
rocket thrust in kilograms.

Authors are strongly encouraged to have their papers peer reviewed by 
others before being submitted. Ask another technical person to review 
your math, science and engineering, a non-technical person can at 
least help you to review grammer and sentence structure. 

Be careful not to use any photos, artwork, diagrams or schematics 
that may be copyrighted by someone else.

AMSAT expects authors to submit their paper exactly as they wish for 
it to appear in the proceedings. "Camera Ready" has no special meaning 
except that we intend to print what you send us without editing for 
format or content.

The only important format specification is that we need 3/4 inch margins 
on the top, right and left of the paper and a 1 inch margin on the bottom. 
The rest of the format will be up to you, but try to design something that 
is readable. It is up to the author to choose single or double column for-
mat, type size and font (within reason). We suggest that you print out a 
copy to see how it looks on paper. 

DO NOT NUMBER YOUR PAGES, we will add page numbers when the book is 
compiled.

All photos and diagrams will be printed in Black and White. Don't rely 
on color graphics to get your point across. It might be a good idea to 
print out your document on a Black and White printer to see how it looks 
on paper. If you send a color version of your paper it will be included 
as a color PDF file on the symposium DVD, but the printed proceedings 
will be in black and white.

The Proceedings will be published on US standard letter size 8.5 by 11 
inch paper. If you wish to use European standard A4 size paper we may 
need to work with you to get it to print correctly in US standard format. 
Do not wait to the last minute to submit your paper if you do that. 

You may submit electronically by e-mail to me in MS-Word or PDF format. 
Linux systems should be capable of generating a PDF output, if you really 
need to submit in some other format we will work with you but again, 
don't wait until the last minute. Please include your name or call sign 
in the file name. Everybody names their file something like "AMSAT_Sub-
mission" which is not very helpful when we have a dozen files all named
"AMSAT_Submission".

There may be a few days or possibly weeks after September 1 before the 
true "drop-dead" date but we don't encourage anyone to test the true 
deadline by delaying past that date. We may need that time to resolve 
readability and format issues with the print shop. If you delay submission 
past the due date we cannot guarantee that your paper will be printed in 
the proceedings.

At previous Symposiums we made the audio recordings and power point slides 
available on a DVD after the symposium. We would like to try this again at 
this year's Symposium, if you prefer that your presentation not be recorded
and published in this format please let us know. 

JoAnne Maenpaa, K9JKM
2010 AMSAT Symposium Proceedings Editor