[amsat-bb] Amateur satellites and disasters...

["William Leijenaar" <pe1rah@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi AMSATs,

Yesterday I seen the terrible news pictures of the earthquacke disaster in 
Asia.
Lots of places have no communication, and it still shows that amateur radio 
can be very valuable in such situations, especially in these areas.

The idea of the Indian HAMSAT was to see if amateur satellites can help in 
such disasters, unfortunatly hamsat is still to be launched and can not be 
of help this time :o(
HAMSAT will be a LEO, it can only help a little but the value of a HEO like 
AO40 would be tremendous in such a disaster. Altough S band is still not 
very practical for disaster help like this, and in most of these areas it is 
not available by amateurs in these regions.
A HF,2m,70cm could help a lot more, but thats more a technical thing...

Maybe it is a good opertunity to show (international) gouverments that ham 
radio satellites can help a lot in such disasters. Just a HF uplink and 2m 
downlink is enough. (no technical difficult, and expensive microwave stuff) 
HF is all available in these areas, good for the uplink, and the 2m they 
only need a small downconverter of a few dollars...

This is one of the strongest things of our hobby,
Besides we can use our radios to chat with all hams all around the world, we 
can also save thousands of lifes...

So lets tell the gouverments and make some more satellites,

73 de PE1RAH,
William Leijenaar
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